


Right Hand Man

by SilentAuror



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Baby Watson, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Moriarty is Alive, New Relationship, POV: John Watson, anger issues, loss of sense of masculinity, loss of sense of self, physiotherapy, the ending of a marriage, very slight John/Mary (background)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 10:01:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 42,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3205157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentAuror/pseuds/SilentAuror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John's left arm becomes paralysed after a car accident, Mary asks Sherlock to take him back to Baker Street to recuperate, as she's about to give birth. Despite the fact that the search for Moriarty is ongoing, Sherlock takes John in and takes responsibility for overseeing his rehabilitation as he adjusts to the loss of his arm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Right hand man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6065569) by [Make_believe_world](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Make_believe_world/pseuds/Make_believe_world)



> Just a quick note to say that I know I don't usually split my longer novellas/shorter novels into chapters, but I'm experimenting! The fic is completely written and ready to go, and I am going to post a chapter every day. There are four, so it will be posted in completion as of this Friday (January 23rd). Go ahead and wait if you'd rather. Just mentioning it for the WIP-phobes among us (I'm one of them!). :)

**Right Hand Man**

**Chapter One**

What John remembers upon waking in the hospital is the screech of tyres, a blare of horns, and his own sharp, cut-off words to Mary before the world went black. 

There was a right turn, he thinks blearily through the pain in his lower left side. A right turn that shouldn’t have been made. She couldn’t see what was coming, and they were hit. The pain cuts through the shadows of his thoughts, pulsing insistently, and John tries to put his hand on it, press down into it. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Startled, John looks up to see Sherlock seated beside the bed. He has a thousand questions that all want asking at once. “Why not?” is the first one that leaves his mouth, stupid as it is. 

“Several reasons,” Sherlock says. It occurs to John that his voice and face both seem rather intense. Before he can ask what the reasons are, Sherlock sits up straighter. “You’re awake,” he says abruptly. “That’s good. Do you remember what happened?”

“There was an accident,” John says, still feeling stupid. “Mary turned right when she shouldn’t have. Is she – ”

“She’s fine,” Sherlock says, overlapping his words in brusque reassurance. “She was here earlier. I think she went back to the flat.” He stops and John senses rather than sees his hesitation. Sherlock is looking at something else, not his face. John follows his line of sight to his left hand. “You’ve got other questions,” Sherlock says, evading his eyes. 

He’s still waiting for John to catch on to something, but what it is hasn’t occurred to John yet. “I’ve been hurt, though,” John says, the pain coming through clearly if little else is. “What happened?” 

Sherlock is still looking at his hand, his face a bit pained. “What does it feel like?” he asks, his voice tight. 

John pats cautiously at the source of the pain. _Wait a minute._ “Why can’t I feel my hand?” he asks, an edge of panic that he doesn’t like coming into his voice, and Sherlock winces. 

“You can’t feel anything?” he asks, as though confirming something to which he already knows the answer. “Nothing whatsoever?”

“No,” John says, his pulse leaping into his throat. “Not from the elbow down. Why? Why can’t I? What’s going on?” 

Sherlock sighs. “I’m sorry, John,” he says. “You’ve been injured. Part of the car door punctured your left side and your hand and forearm were pinned in it as well. There’s been some nerve damage. It may heal. And it may not.”

“I’m left-handed,” John says stupidly. “I do everything with this hand.”

Sherlock’s lips tighten. “You can shoot with your right,” he offers, though it sounds a bit half-hearted. 

“I _can_ shoot with my right, but I really shoot with my left,” John says. The numbness of shock is beginning to set in. “It was only in Afghanistan and just after that I was using my right more often because it was more convenient for the particular guns we were carrying. But lately – and everything else I do is with my left. I’ll have to learn how to write all over again.”

“You could always type,” Sherlock says, and John glares at him. 

“That’s not very damned funny!” 

Sherlock has the grace to look slightly abashed. “I know. Sorry. Just trying to – I don’t know. Sorry. I really am sorry that this has happened. What about the puncture wound? How do you feel?”

“It hurts,” John admits, grimacing as he prods at it with his useless hand. It feels so wrong, having this dead appendage. He feels it as a much greater calamity than he ever might have imagined losing the use of a limb would feel. It’s traumatic. He’s a tactile person; touch is half of how he sees the world. A hard lump comes into his throat and suddenly he doesn’t want to try speaking lest his voice betray him. 

“It’s a shock,” Sherlock says, observing him too closely. “It must be.”

John manages a shaky exhalation and nods, not looking at Sherlock. “Have I had surgery?” he asks, trying to focus on strict medical fact. 

Sherlock nods. “Minor. You shouldn’t need to have any further, unless it infects. Rehab, on the other hand, is a strong possibility. If only to help teach you how to use your right hand for more.”

“Why the hell isn’t Mary here?” John asks crossly, ignoring the rehab comment. 

“She was here earlier, as I said,” Sherlock says carefully. He hesitates and John can feel the questions forming. 

It’s been a month since Christmas – a month since he took Mary back and moved back in with her, and it’s been a difficult one. She still hasn’t forgiven him for not having been there with her for six months of her pregnancy, and he still hasn’t forgiven her for having tried to kill his best friend. He’s been trying, but her utter lack of remorse doesn’t help. She feels entirely justified in what she did and refuses to see any other way of looking at it and won’t even discuss it. Which is probably for the best, anyway, because it’s difficult for John to keep calm about this. Not after the two sleepless nights he spent in the hospital at Sherlock’s bedside, praying to a God he only half-believes in (for situations like war zones and your best friend hovering between life and death, maybe) that Sherlock would live – first on the night that Sherlock was shot, and then again on the night that John discovered who it was who had shot him. And then there were all of those nights at Baker Street as he tossed and turned on the sofa, half an ear listening for Sherlock to call out, whether for morphine or help shifting positions or help getting out of bed. Mary had faulted him for staying there, but of course he had. Of course. It hadn’t even been a question. She’d been furious and hurt and said accusatory things along the lines of if he was leaving her then he should just leave her and be done with it and he’d told her that he wasn’t ready to talk about any of it and that Sherlock needed him and that it wasn’t up for discussion. They’d stopped talking. 

But since Christmas he’s been gamely, grimly trying to make a go of it, if only for the sake of his as-yet-unborn child, though she’s due in about a week. And it hasn’t been going well, honestly. They’d only been living together for a couple of months before the wedding and they’d spent most of that at Baker Street, chin-deep in wedding planning, always with Sherlock there. Somehow that had been a comfort, not being left alone with Mary, though John never would have admitted it at the time. It got easier to see it between summer and Christmas, during the six months that he’d lived at Baker Street again. A lot of things made themselves clearer, some of which he’d already known for ages, others of which had been newer discoveries. But in the end, his duty had been clear: he had to go back to Mary. And so he had. But without a particularly stable foundation leading up to the wedding… Those two and a half months of domestic life had been punctured enormously with time spent with Sherlock, then there’d been the honeymoon, which had been lovely but obviously having nothing to do with real life in any way – and then Mary had shot Sherlock. What had there been for them to come back to? It’s felt like starting all over. 

They’ve had sex precisely once since John moved back in, and it was a disaster. With Mary hugely pregnant, John had pointed out that the most obvious position would be with him behind her, but she’s always refused this. When pressed at one point before the marriage, before they’d even been living together, Mary had said tightly that it seemed a bit too gay, adding, “and considering…” and then hadn’t finished her sentence. When John had asked what she meant, his own voice rather acidic, she’d insisted on dropping the subject, apologising and adding that she just didn’t like making love that way and John had dropped it, privately relieved not to hear whatever Mary’s ‘considerations’ concerning him were. He _knows_ , damn it. He knows very well that he could have gone that way. Always could have, with the right person, but there’s only ever been one right person and said person doesn’t do that sort of thing. John always thought that if it was ever going to happen between him and Sherlock, it would have happened at some point during those eighteen rather glorious months they’d spent together before Sherlock’s apparent death. But it never had, and besides which, John prefers to see himself with women, anyway. Liking it doggy-style has no bearing on any of that. It’s just a position preference. 

But Mary had refused again when he’d suggested it, for the first time in about a year by that point, and John couldn’t let himself say that he would have also preferred that option as he could have avoided looking at her face during it if they had done it that way. In the end, he’d managed to bring off missionary position despite her belly, their standard, only not having got laid in six months had taken its toll: he’d thrust into her about three times and then come, cursing and apologising even as he had, and Mary had been so annoyed with him that she hadn’t let him try to get her off any other way, turning her back on him. She’d made one too many caustic remarks about it after breaking her pointed and long-suffering silence over breakfast and John had refused to initiate it again, humiliated and angry. He still feels himself flushing to the ears when he thinks of it. He’s always had good stamina before, been a rather good lover, in fact, or so his partners have told him in the past. Mary had made him feel incapable, emasculated. 

Now Sherlock is sitting here beside his bed, looking his questions at John regarding Mary and suddenly John knows that if he says anything at all now, it will be too much. It will all come spilling out, and he’s got quite enough to deal with at the moment as it is. The crushing news about his hand is still making him feel as though he’s been hit in the stomach and had the wind knocked out of his lungs. Change the subject, then. John reaches across himself to feel at the injury with his right hand. It hurts when he pushes against the bandaging. “What exactly happened here?” 

“You’ve had stitches,” Sherlock tells him. “Fourteen of them. The hull of the car broke through the plastic of the interior and stabbed deep into your external oblique muscle. It also punctured your small intestines, so they did a bit of surgery on that as well. That’s why you’re on an IV. Don’t worry, that won’t last for more than a few days.”

“Jesus,” John says. “But there’s no permanent damage? That they’ve told you about, I mean?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “No,” he says, and John is glad for once that Sherlock has decided to grant him his unrelenting honesty. 

He stops, not wanting to ask the other question, but needing to know at the same time. “And – my hand?” he asks, searching Sherlock’s face for the truth, almost holding his breath. “Is there – do they think there’s any chance that – ” He stops, unable to finish. 

Sherlock shakes his head again, not meeting his eyes. “They’ll have you in rehab starting as soon as you’re able to be up and moving around again,” he says. “But the chances are very low. That’s what they said.” 

John swallows, the tightness in his throat nearly choking him, swallows again. He cannot speak. 

“I’m sorry, John,” Sherlock adds quietly. 

Before he can answer or start trying to, the door opens and a doctor comes in. He repeats everything that Sherlock has just told him, only with more detail and less getting to the point. He speaks about John’s hand extremely matter-of-factly, as though knowing that acknowledging it as the loss it is will reduce John to pieces, and John is tense throughout, steeled against the dawning knowledge that his entire life as he knows it has just changed dramatically and permanently. He thinks of _Game of Thrones_ , which he and Sherlock were watching during the autumn and of Jaime Lannister, knocking over his wine with his golden hand. This is going to be fucking terrible. He half-listens to the doctor talking about rehabilitation programs for people with lost or newly-useless limbs (he doesn’t put it that way but John paraphrases his careful words himself, irritated by the man’s caution). Sherlock is asking questions – many of them, perhaps knowing that John isn’t entirely listening or capable of it at the moment, that shock is setting in, fighting against the instinct to reject it, disbelieve it. The warring notions of _this can’t be happening_ against _oh my God, this is actually happening and Jesus fuck what the hell am I going to do?_

Without a left hand, he cannot be a doctor. Without a left hand, he cannot write. Without a left hand, he cannot simultaneously hold and open a bottle unless he can pin the bottle in his dead forearm. He won’t be able to run after Sherlock and pull him down just in time for a bullet to scream through the space where his head had just been – not unless he can trust his slower right arm to do it in time. The thought of his other life, the one he should have thought of first, comes to mind. They are about to have a baby. Without a functioning left hand and forearm, how can he pick up an infant and hold it? ( _Her_ , John corrects himself.) How can he possibly change a nappy or twist the lid off a jar of baby food once she’s eating solids when he doesn’t even know how he’ll manage dressing himself? A thousand other tiny, mundane, everyday tasks that have suddenly become impossible or nearly impossible flood John’s mind. Cutting food while eating it. Chopping vegetables. Washing or drying dishes. Flossing his teeth. Or all of the things that can be done one-handed but which he’s always done with his left hand: shaving. Brushing his teeth. Hell, he can’t even remember the last time he had a wank with his right hand, depressing thought. He can only imagine how many times he’ll cut his face the first time he shaves right-handed. 

The thought of it all is swamping him when the door opens again and Mary comes in. “You’re awake,” she says, and it sounds like an accusation. 

The muscles of John’s jaw clench. Sherlock notices. “Would you like me to go?” he asks, lowering his voice so that only John will hear. 

“No,” John mutters back. He focuses on Mary, sullen. “Where have _you_ been?” 

She blinks a few times. “I went back to the flat,” she says slowly. “You were unconscious. I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was supposed to stay around the clock.”

She looks even bigger than she did before the accident, John thinks. “What day is it?” he asks Sherlock. 

“Thursday,” Sherlock and Mary say in near unison, their voices overlapping. “The accident was yesterday morning,” Sherlock adds. “They’ve been keeping you sedated for the surgery and such.”

“You couldn’t stay for twenty-four hours?” John asks Mary, irritated. “What was so pressing that you had to go home?” 

Mary glances at Sherlock as though uncertain, but Sherlock’s face is cool. “I’m pregnant, in case you’ve forgotten,” Mary says, her voice both unsteady yet a bit defiant. “I couldn’t sleep in a chair. And Sherlock was here.”

“Yes, well,” John says, and doesn’t finish his sentence. Doesn’t add, _Given all the time I’ve spent looking after him in the past seven months, I’d give him hell for ditching me now that I’ve wound up in the hospital._

“Perhaps I should leave you two alone,” Sherlock says carefully, starting to get up. 

“No,” John says firmly. “Stay right where you are. I don’t want you leaving just because Mary’s here.”

Sherlock hesitates, glances at Mary, who shrugs, looking at the floor. He sits down again. The atmosphere in the room is charged. 

“Has there been a police report for the accident?” John wants to know. 

Mary sighs. She looks away, looking upset. “Is this the part where you tell me how it was my fault?” Her voice is higher and a bit shaky, as though she’s trying not to cry. She crosses her arms over her belly. 

“It _was_ your fault,” John says, aware of how harsh he sounds. “I _told_ you not to make that blind right turn when you couldn’t see past the lorry. But you did, and I’m the one who got hit!”

“I’m not going to listen to this,” Mary says, still looking away. “I know you’re angry and looking for someone to blame but I’m not going to stand here and listen to this. Let me know when you’re feeling like a rational person again and I’ll come back.”

“Oh, go on, then,” John snaps. “Just leave me here!”

“John,” Sherlock says quietly, not quite placating but verging on it. 

“Don’t bother, Sherlock,” Mary says. Her eyes are bright with tears as she walks out. 

A silence falls in the room. “Don’t _you_ start in on me,” John says, before Sherlock can say anything. 

“I wasn’t going to,” Sherlock says, his voice still low. “You’re perfectly right: the accident was Mary’s fault. There is a report that you can read when you like. If you want, I’ll have Lestrade bring it. He wants to visit, anyway.” He pauses. “She does feel badly, you know.”

John snorts. “I’m not sure Mary knows what remorse is.”

Sherlock doesn’t answer for a moment, but John can feel his hesitation. “I don’t want to add fuel to the fire,” he says after a bit, but doesn’t elaborate. 

John gives him a pointed look. “Has she ever apologised to you for shooting you?” he asks, the question abrupt. 

“No.”

“No. Nor has she done to me. In fact, I would say that she has no regrets about it whatsoever. She seems to feel entirely justified in having done so,” John says stubbornly. 

Sherlock takes a careful breath. “I’m not saying that you’re incorrect,” he begins. “But it could be more – beneficial for you to focus on the issue at hand.” He winces. “As it were. If we get into all of that, I’m concerned that you’ll only succeed in upsetting yourself.”

“And we can’t have that, can we,” John says, scowling at the opposite wall. A vital signs monitor beeps next to him. “And I’m certainly not already upset, am I. I _hate_ hospitals!”

Sherlock gives him an understanding look. “I know,” he says. “I rather hate them, myself. But you won’t be here long. Just a few days. Not like I was.”

“And then I’ll be released into Mary’s tender, loving care,” John says sarcastically. “ _Wonderful_. Brilliant.”

Sherlock looks confused. “John, I don’t understand… _you_ chose to go back. If it wasn’t – if you didn’t – ” He stops, clearly uncertain as to how to finish the question. 

“The baby,” John says flatly. “The baby that I won’t be able to hold or – do anything to take care of. That one. I’m going to be completely useless to my daughter when she’s born. Which she will be in about a week now, if Mary’s labour starts on time.”

“Ah,” Sherlock says with no particular emotion. “I see.” Another silence falls. Sherlock uncrosses his legs. “Do you need anything?” he asks. “Something to drink? You’re not permitted solids yet, but some tea, perhaps? A book? Are you warm enough?” 

“Too bloody warm,” John says, going to push down the blankets with his left arm, realising afresh only when it flops like a dead weight against his abdomen that the limb is useless to him. “Bloody hell!” he explodes, trying again with his right hand. 

Sherlock watches him, and whatever is going on behind his eyes is shadowed behind the walls of his face. “Let me get you a tea,” he says eventually, and mercifully leaves the room and pretending he didn’t see John struggling to suppress his frustrated tears. 

They sting at his eyes and flood them anyway the instant he is alone. He’s sitting up in bed, cradling his dead left hand with his right arm, tears sliding silently over his face as he screams out his rage and frustration inside his skull, his face grimacing as he rocks himself back and forth. He hates everything and everyone at the moment. Mary for getting him into the stupid accident that’s cost him _this_. Mary for a host of other reasons, both valid and less valid. (Not Sherlock, he thinks. Not this time.) But everything else. He looks down at his hand and tries to open and close the fingers and nothing happens. He feels as though he’s lost a part of who he is, that his entire life and being have been stripped of what he is and does, the importance therein. His very identity is lying on the floor in pieces, bleeding. What the hell is he going to do now? 

*** 

The next few days are dark and bitter. Every single thing John does is an impossible struggle, from straightening out his IV tube to wrestling his gown closed behind him when he gets out of bed to use the loo or wander listlessly around his small room the few times when neither Sherlock nor Mary are there. 

Mary did come back later that same day, likely fetched by Sherlock – in person or by text, John suspects, though he hasn’t asked and Sherlock hasn’t volunteered this. He doesn’t know whether Sherlock and Mary are actually trying to be friends or if it’s all just a show for his sake, but that clears up a little as they begin to bicker over him. Or rather Mary bickers and Sherlock refuses to budge, so Mary gets louder and Sherlock gets colder. A nurse came in to change the dressing on John’s incision, exposing his hip and thigh along with the wound itself. Mary had wanted Sherlock to leave the room, staring pointedly at him when the nurse pulled back the blankets. 

She’d cleared her throat, looking at Sherlock. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock hadn’t taken his eyes from John. “What?” 

The pause had been pointed. “Don’t you think you should maybe leave?” Mary asked, lowering her voice, though the edge in it hadn’t lessened. 

Sherlock had shrugged, his eyes still watching the nurse. “Why?” 

Then the anger had flashed. “ _Why?_ Because it’s my _husband_ half-naked there that you’re staring at! Give us some privacy, would you?” 

John had glanced up between them, at Mary’s round-eyed blue glare and Sherlock’s implacable, set shoulders. “It’s not a prob – ” he’d started, but Sherlock had already started answering Mary. 

“It’s hardly the first time I’ve seen John in his undergarments,” he said, giving Mary a long, cool stare of his own. “We did live together for nearly two years.”

A year and a half, John could have corrected him, but hadn’t. If they count the six months after Sherlock was shot, it’s two years, anyway. “Mary,” he’d said again, interjecting. “It’s fine. I don’t care. God knows I’ve seen _him_ mostly undressed, particularly while he was healing last autumn.”

Mary had rounded on him then. “And of course you _would_ bring that up now!” she’d said, furious. “Fine, then! If you don’t care if half the world watches as you’re stripped down, good! Have it your way! I just don’t think it’s particularly appropriate when you’re a married man, but what do I know?” 

John had winced as the nurse patted down the new bandaging – it was all such a stupid argument and pointless anyway, as the changing took all of five minutes – and said, “For God’s _sake_ , Mary, it’s not half the world; it’s _Sherlock_. My bloody best friend. Just calm down, would you?” 

She’d turned and strode out with as much dignity as an enormously pregnant woman possibly can, refusing to even look at Sherlock or acknowledge John’s words. After she’d gone, the nurse had given John a sympathetic look before leaving, herself, and then he and Sherlock had been alone again. Sherlock had said nothing, one knee crossed over the other, his hands linked around the top knee. Tactfully waiting for John to be the first to speak. 

“In case you’re wondering,” John had said, looking down at his feet under the sheets, “no, I never told her about the time your sheet almost fell off in Buckingham Palace. Or all the times it actually did fall off around the flat before that.”

Sherlock had cleared his throat. “It probably wouldn’t go over well.”

“No,” John had agreed, feeling slightly awkward over the silent acknowledgement that Mary certainly would have considered their level of physical comfort around one another ‘inappropriate’ as well. There’s never been any point in mentioning it – or indeed, anything in particular to mention. It’s just one of the oddities that goes with being friends and flatmates with Sherlock Holmes. 

There’d been a couple of other small instances of bickering between them, usually to do with Mary inserting herself somewhere that Sherlock had already been, whether it was in helping John to the loo or calling a nurse or whatever, but Mary’s subsided. John is to go home tomorrow now that the abdominal stitching is healed, but apparently this requires discussion, too, a discussion which seemingly doesn’t involve him. Mary and Sherlock are standing outside his room talking about him, possibly unaware that he can hear them just fine. 

“Sherlock, I don’t know whether it’s escaped your notice, but I’m _pregnant_ ,” Mary is saying acerbically. 

“Yes, of course I’ve noticed,” Sherlock says in response, annoyed. “What’s your point?” 

“The point is that I’m about to give birth, any day now, and – ” Mary hesitates for a moment. “The truth is that the last thing I need is a patient as well as a newborn – a patient who is going to need considerable amounts of help in the next little while, plus transportation to rehab every day or every other day or whatever it ends up being, and I’m going to be looking after a newborn infant by myself, without his help. He can’t hold a baby, or change her. Obviously he can’t feed her, and – ”

“Yes, I get the picture,” Sherlock says, sounding unimpressed, at least to John’s ear. And cold, too. “What are you saying, precisely? What are you getting at? Do you need to hire someone to help, or – ?” 

There’s another small pause. John imagines Mary looking at the floor for a moment before coming out with it. (It’s funny, he thinks – he knows her mannerisms, but nothing of her past.) “I’m wondering if you would take him back to Baker Street with you. Just for a while. Just while the baby is really young. I can’t look after him and a baby both. I just can’t.”

Sherlock’s answering silence feels heavy even to John. When he speaks again, he sounds utterly appalled. “You are his _wife_ ,” he says, steel in his tone. “Do you really care for him as little as that?” 

“Christ, Sherlock, don’t twist my words like that,” Mary says angrily, possibly stung by the harshness of Sherlock’s reaction. “It’s exactly because I care about him that I want to see him well looked after! I just can’t be the one to do it!”

“Funny,” Sherlock says acidly. “And here I thought it sounded like a question of your convenience and availability rather than his comfort.”

“Well, he’d be more comfortable at Baker Street,” Mary retorts. “God knows he’s lived there longer than he’s lived with _me_.”

There is another silence during which John has no idea what is going on. Finally Sherlock says, his voice low, “Of course he can come home with me. I will look after him.”

“You’re sure?” Mary asks, sounding as though she’s wincing. “Only I don’t expect he’ll be a particularly easy patient…”

“Thank you,” Sherlock says curtly. “But I do not require you to explain John Watson to me. And we should not be having this conversation without him. I’m sure you agree.” With that, he turns and comes into the room. His eyes meet John’s and he stops, immediately aware that John has heard all of this. His lips compress, possibly in self-reproach. “Sorry,” he says quietly as Mary comes in behind him. “I didn’t realise. What do you think?” 

“Oh, I’m allowed a say, am I?” John all but spits, enraged, looking back and forth between them. “I get to say where I’d prefer to live, where I’d most like to re-learn how to do absolutely everything I’ve ever done with the other hand and all that? That’s generous of you two. Really bloody generous.”

“Oh, calm down,” Mary tells him, annoyed. “We’re just thinking of what would be best for you.”

“No, you’re thinking of what would be best for _you_ ,” Sherlock says to her over his shoulder, just barely looking back. 

“I agree,” John says before Mary can, his voice hard. He meets Mary’s gaze evenly. “You’re right. I’ll just be in your way around the baby. And obviously I’m completely worthless to you as a co-parent.” 

Mary sighs and rolls her eyes. “You might not be once you’ve been through physiotherapy, possibly, but you have to admit that you’re more of a liability than an aid at the moment!”

“Right, because all one-armed people are nothing more than liabilities,” John snaps. “Fine. You can kick me out of the flat. I’ll go back to Baker Street then, since Sherlock’s willing to have me there and you aren’t.”

Sherlock looks back at Mary with an unreadable look on his face, then looks back at him again. “She does have a point,” he offers. “The earliest weeks will be the hardest for you – and with the newborn as well. It could be easier this way, in some ways.” He looks at Mary again. “You _will_ bring the baby over now and then,” he says, and it isn’t a request. 

Mary glares at him but nods sullenly. “Yes, of course,” she says, not sounding particularly gracious. 

“And when you go into labour?” John asks. “Will I be allowed to attend?” 

“Yes,” Mary says, annoyed again. “Though if you’re going to be on the other side of the city, I can’t really predict where and when it will happen, of course.”

“That’s enough,” Sherlock says quietly, but there is bedrock beneath it. Silence falls as Mary looks at him defiantly. 

She caves after a moment. “Fine, then,” she says. “I suppose I’ll be off, then. Do stay in touch this time, won’t you?” she says, looking pointedly at John. 

John shrugs, still angry. “I guess so.” How can he refuse? He has to know when the baby is going to arrive, yet it bothers him enormously to be thus beholden to Mary. 

Mary’s jaw clenches and her eyes go bright. She leaves without another word. 

Sherlock is uncharacteristically quiet for several long moments after the door closes. “So,” he says eventually, looking over at John. “Back to Baker Street, then.”

John tries to smile. It fails. “Looks like you can’t get rid of me,” he says, his mouth twisting. He sounds angry. He _is_ angry. And yet some part of him, some part below the stinging layer of hurt that his own wife has just rejected him after he’s had a limb paralysed in an accident that was unarguably her fault, on some deeper level John is gladder than he can even admit to himself to be going back to Baker Street with Sherlock. It feels a bit as though he’s failed, failed at going back to Mary and making it work. But it also feels like such a relief in another way. Baker Street is home – and always has been, much more so than the flat he shares with Mary. “You’re sure you don’t mind?” he adds, glancing at Sherlock. “You know it’s true, what Mary said: I’m going to need a lot of help. You can’t just go running off and leaving me behind.”

Sherlock looks affronted. “I have no intention of doing any such thing,” he says, a trifle shortly. “And of course I don’t _mind_. Why should I mind? You’re my best friend. And you just spent half a year looking after me. Why on earth should it be any different now that it’s you?” 

John swallows. He thinks of the fact that Moriarty is back and apparently still on the loose, though so far Mycroft and Sherlock haven’t go anywhere with that. He decides not to mention it out loud since Sherlock will already be thinking of this. Sherlock has just said that he won’t leave him to go after Moriarty. He has no idea what he can even say to that. His throat feels prickly and his voice comes out sounding gruff. “Well, that’s settled, then,” he mutters, and he knows it’s inadequate but it’s all he can manage for the moment. His brain chooses that moment to remind him that Sherlock really does know him extraordinarily well and that he probably knows that there is more behind John’s terse words than he’s said, and he feels momentarily better. 

*** 

Rehabilitation starts that evening, before he’s discharged. Sherlock not only comes, but insists on coming in. “Don’t mind me,” he says, when John tells him he can wait in the waiting room and that he really didn’t need to come at all. “I’ll just watch.” And watch he does, from a chair in the corner near the door. John tries to resent it and can’t, somehow. This should be private, being seen as useless as he currently feels, but then, Sherlock is surely going to see him even worse if he’s the only one helping for the next little while. 

And besides, the physiotherapist agrees with Sherlock’s being there once he learns who Sherlock is. Not that John protested outright, but the man seems to understand John’s reluctance for what it is. He addresses most of his comments to John but occasionally looks over at Sherlock to include him in them, too. 

His name is Sergio and he is tough and muscular and bald and kind in a rough sort of way. Ex-military, John gathers immediately, though possibly not British military. Late fifties, obviously a second career. Sherlock has indubitably inferred gallons more than that, but this is enough for John. They start by discussing the injury and Sergio asks him what he’s noticed so far and how he’s compensated. They go through some basic overall strategies and Sergio informs him that he’ll be coming in every other day for the next month or two, depending on his progress. John tries not to sigh. 

Because it’s the first session, it’s mercifully short, though John can already see how difficult this is going to be. As it winds down, Sergio turns to Sherlock and speaks to him. “He will need more help than he wants, especially at first,” he says, as though John isn’t in the room. “The question for you will be knowing when to give it and when not to. You’re close, I take it.”

John clears his throat. “Sherlock is my best friend. We’ve lived together for about two years before.”

“Good,” Sergio says brusquely. “This will take a lot of trust. The loss of a limb such as this, the dominant hand, is very difficult psychologically as well as physically. You will have to use your own knowledge of one another to know where to set the boundaries between enough help and too much. John, you will need to allow yourself to ask for help, and to allow Sherlock to give it when you do. And sometimes when you don’t. And Sherlock, you will need to learn when to say yes and when to say no. Now: let’s discuss the basics. There are some things that John can do with his right hand for the time being. However, especially at the beginning, certain two-handed tasks will be the really difficult ones. Opening containers. Getting dressed. Anything requiring fine motor skills and both hands at once. For tonight and tomorrow before we meet again, John, you will need a lot of assistance. Try not to let this upset you. It’s normal.”

His dark eyes are stern and John feels an irrational urge to strike the man. “Yeah, well, ‘normal’ just got severely redefined, all right?” 

Sherlock speaks up for the first time, his eyes on Sergio rather than John. “We’ll do our best,” he says, and stands. “Are you ready to go home?” This, at least, is directed at him. 

John nods and stands and Sherlock hands him his coat before silently helping him into it. John turns away before he can try to zip it up for him, too, and doesn’t care whether Sergio notices or not. “Wednesday at two, then,” Sergio says, and goes to open the door. 

They’re both quiet in the taxi. Sherlock is evidently thinking, but not all that deep in thought. “Are you hungry?” he asks, as they draw up in front of the house. He reaches for his wallet and pays and they get out. “We could order in.”

“I suppose,” John says, not really caring. “What am I supposed to do for clothes and that? Everything I have is at the flat.” 

“No.” Sherlock goes to the door and unlocks it. “I had Mary put together a bag for you and Mycroft’s people picked it up and brought it here. If there’s anything you need or want from there, I’ll get it. Or someone will. Or I’ll take you.”

John grits his teeth and refrains from saying anything about being “taken” anywhere, as though he’s a child that needs escorting. As though using the tube requires two arms for some reason. Sherlock _is_ just trying to help, he knows. Still. Everything is going to be like this from now on: either a battle against his own pride, or feeling like an incapable child or a – handicapped person with no abilities of his own. He’d thought the limp was bad. This is infinitely worse, and it’s real and likely permanent, too. 

Sherlock is looking at him, he realises. Waiting on an answer to something? “Dinner?” Sherlock repeats lightly, reminding him. 

“Oh. Yeah, I guess.” John follows Sherlock up the stairs, attempting to shrug off his coat on his own. It works, to his grim satisfaction. “Not Chinese.” It comes out gruffer than he meant to. He can’t handle chopsticks with his right hand. Hell, even a fork will be pushing it. 

“I was thinking maybe pizza,” Sherlock says, a bit too quickly. It’s an uncharacteristic choice and obviously pre-planned. He must have caught that, because he doesn’t quite wince after saying it. “What do you think?” 

“Fine,” John says, not wanting to discuss it. “Pizza would be fine.” 

Sherlock takes out his phone. “Toppings?” 

“I don’t care.”

Sherlock doesn’t comment on this, but orders what he knows John would have chosen: Italian sausage, mushroom, and tomato. They don’t have pizza all that often but the last time they did, probably in September or so, that was what John had wanted. Of course Sherlock remembered. 

When it comes, they eat on the sofa with the pizza box on the coffee table and Sherlock gets two bottles of beer from the fridge. “Where’d you get those?” John asks over the quiz show on the telly. 

Sherlock is quiet for a moment. “The Vltava River,” he says, in answer to one of the trivia questions being asked. Then, “They were still here. After you left.” 

John turns his head to look at Sherlock, but Sherlock’s eyes are on the tv screen, blue-ish light flickering over his face. His expression is studiedly neutral, but John thinks of his left-behind beer after he left Baker Street (and Sherlock) on Christmas Day and suddenly feels a pang, thinking of Sherlock seeing them there in the fridge later, a reminder of his departure and absence. He wonders how Sherlock felt, seeing them there. “I see,” he says, breaking the small silence. 

Sherlock turns his head now and meets his eyes. He lifts his bottle and clinks it against John’s. “Cheers,” he says. “To having you here again. Even under the circumstances.”

“Cheers,” John echoes, and takes a long sip. 

“We’ll make the best of it,” Sherlock promises, speaking to the sofa cushion between them. “I know it’s far from ideal and that you’d rather be at home with Mary. I’ll do my best, though. Like you did for me.” 

John tries to absorb this, filling his mouth with pizza so that he won’t have to say anything in response, and Sherlock drops the subject. 

*** 

When the pizza is finished and the bottles empty, John yawns. “I’m dying for a shower,” he admits aloud, “but the thought of managing the bottles is a bit much at the moment.”

“Actually,” Sherlock says, “I was thinking about that. I thought that, at least tonight, I would help you with that.”

“Help me?” John repeats, getting to his feet and staring down at Sherlock. “In the _shower?_ ”

“Yes,” Sherlock says evenly. “I thought it might be difficult.” His eyes flick down over John’s attire (jeans and a jumper, which a nurse helped him into). “Will you be all right with your clothes? Tell you what – just come into the bathroom when you’re ready to shower and we’ll see.” 

This is tactful on his part, John knows, but it’s still hitting him repeatedly exactly how much help he really will need. And that Sherlock is going to be the one giving _all_ of it, no matter how personal. “Right,” he says abruptly. “Er – I’m just going to take my bag upstairs. I’ll, er, be down in a bit.” 

“Take your time,” Sherlock says, waving him off and taking the pizza box into the kitchen. 

John picks up the carry-all near the door and takes it up to his room. It’s unchanged, just the same as he left it on Christmas morning. It feels a bit cold, so he turns up the heat, then goes to have a proper look at himself in the mirror for the first time since the accident. He’s glanced at himself in the mirrors the loo in his hospital room but he’s always hated the sight of himself in a hospital gown and the lighting always brought out the sallowness of his skin and the bags under his eyes. The bags are still there and his hair is a little too grown out for his liking. He looks old and tired. His mouth is set in a long, thin line bracketed by frown lines. He thinks of Sherlock showering with him and tries to repress a shiver. He knows Sherlock is just being logical, practical, but – showering together? John knows how it could have been between them, knows that a (large) part of him has never stopped wanting that, at least on some unspoken, subconscious level. Will showering together bring it all to the surface again? Quite possibly. He still hasn’t lost the seven pounds he put on after the wedding and knows that Sherlock will see it and likely find it completely unattractive. But now that he has a useless left hand and can’t even wash his own hair, he’s hardly an attractive specimen at the moment, anyway. And besides, what choice does he have? John turns and sets his shoulders, then goes downstairs. 

Sherlock is sitting on the sofa with his laptop now, but closes it as soon as he sees John. “Ready?” he asks. 

John nods, still feeling stiff and awkward about this. He walks down the hall and into the loo, Sherlock following him and shutting the door behind him. 

“Now,” he says. “The experiment: your clothes. See what you can do on your own first; I don’t want to jump the gun and help you if you don’t need it.”

“Fine,” John says, and manages with some difficulty to haul his jumper over his head. No buttons, snaps, hooks, or any other nonsense there. The vest gets the same treatment, leaving him half-naked just like that. Sherlock is busying himself with the water anyway, adjusting the temperature and turning on the shower. John glances at him, then starts attempting to unbutton his jeans with his weak hand. It takes several efforts but he gets it. Down to his socks and underwear, John goes for his socks next. This is fine. Much easier than putting them on. He predicts a good many barefoot days in the near future. 

Sherlock straightens up, gives him a diagnostic once-over, and nods approvingly. “Good,” he says. He points with his chin at John’s underwear. “Get those off and get into the shower. I’ll be right there.” He opens the other door and goes into his bedroom, leaving the door open. 

John gets his thumb into the waistband of his pants and tugs, first on the near side, then the far, then the back, wincing as the band pulls against the bandaging of his incision. It takes a good deal of effort, but he gets his underwear off and is just stepping out of them when Sherlock returns, having stripped down to his black briefs. John glances down and tries not to notice. “Leaving those on?” he asks, trying to sound nonchalant. 

Sherlock looks down, too. “I thought I would, yes,” he says. He stoops and picks up John’s clothes, leaving them on top of the laundry hamper, then gets out two towels and sets them on top. “Easier off than on, I see,” he says briskly. “Good. Now: into the shower.” 

John gets in, reaching out with his useless left arm for balance without thinking, and winces as his dead hand thunks against the wall tiles. “Damn it!”

“Not to worry,” Sherlock assures him, stepping lithely in behind him and pulling the curtains shut. “First shower since the accident. First anything is going to be difficult.” 

“Easy for you to say,” John retorts. “You’re not the one who has to live with it.”

He can hear Sherlock’s pause behind him. Then he says, carefully, “I thought that was precisely what I was doing.”

John sighs. His breath disturbs the clouds of steam already forming. The water is hitting his back but his hair is still dry. “Sorry,” he says, trying not to grumble. 

“Not an issue. Try to relax,” Sherlock tells him, and pulls him by the shoulders, drawing him back under the flow of the water. 

It feels heavenly. He was only allowed sponge baths in the hospital and he’s felt unwashed since he was admitted. The hot water soaks into his scalp and sluices down over his face and ears and body, almost hot enough to make his skin prickle. He tips his head back a little, revelling in it and tries not to notice the sensations of the way the water tracks down his upper left arm and then disappears when it reaches his forearm. Sherlock’s hands come up to touch his head then, smoothing the hair back from his brow. 

“I’m going to wash your hair,” he says. “All right?” 

“Okay,” John says. No point arguing, really; obviously this was Sherlock’s plan all along. 

Sherlock opens a heavy bottle of expensive shampoo – his own, John notices – and after a moment begins massaging it into John’s scalp. John closes his eyes and tries not to groan aloud at the sensation. He _loves_ scalp massages and has never before received one from someone he has been actively attracted to before. Sherlock’s fingers are long and limber and strong, pulling at the roots of his hair just enough to provide maximum pleasure and before John knows it, he starts getting hard. 

Well. Isn’t that a turn-up for the books, then? After six extremely bleak days in the hospital, he’d started thinking he was never going to get it up again. And it’s been a _very_ dry seven months, that one terrible incident with Mary notwithstanding. And knowing that some part of himself almost certainly wouldn’t have turned down the opportunity when it comes to Sherlock, this is not exactly what he had in mind. The timing is all wrong, and he feels pudgy, freshly handicapped, and altogether unattractive, and this is rather embarrassing. He hopes Sherlock won’t notice. Maybe he will and he’ll just tell himself that normal, sexually active people get boners in the shower. Maybe he won’t realise this is embarrassing for John. 

Sherlock is being extremely attentive, his hands continually scooping the foam back from John’s forehead and keeping it out of his eyes, then he pulls John’s head back into the stream of water again to rinse the shampoo out. There’s a slight pause as Sherlock reaches for another bottle and reaches around John’s left side with it. “Here,” he says. “Hold out your hand.” 

Obviously he means the right. John turns up his palm to receive a handful of shower gel. It smells luxuriously expensive – some combination of sandalwood, vanilla, spice, and possibly ylang-ylang or something along those lines. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with it, though. 

“Wash whatever you can reach with that,” Sherlock tells him from behind him, as though reading his mind. “I’m going to wash your back.” 

John doesn’t answer, rubbing the palmful of shower gel against his stomach to get it to foam up, then smears it over his chest and belly and neck, then over his left arm. He doesn’t even want to touch his cock with it half-hard like it is, but he gives it a quick once-over anyway, and tries to ignore the feeling of Sherlock’s hands on him. 

It’s extremely difficult because it feels shamefully good. No one has touched him this way in ages, and it’s no excuse. Things may not be exactly rosy with Mary, but he _is_ married, damn it. Sherlock’s hands slick down over his sides, firmly enough that it doesn’t tickle, rub over his back and shoulders and hips. There is a quick, light passing over of his arse and then Sherlock says, “Lift your arms.”

John does it without questioning why and Sherlock runs his hands over the wet hair of John’s armpits, and it’s ridiculously arousing, somehow, his prick firming up and standing even more at attention. John clears his throat and tries to think of anything but this. His hand. That should about kill the mood, if there even _is_ a mood. He moves his hand with his upper arm so that it swings against his own thigh and he can feel it in his leg and in his upper arm, but not the hand itself. 

Sherlock is rubbing something between his palms and then rubbing whatever it is into John’s hair, slicking it through as though he is bathing a dog at a grooming clinic. Nevertheless, his fingertips press in lines of pressure that translate directly as pleasure in John’s scalp. 

He shivers. “What is that?” 

“Conditioner,” Sherlock says. “Just a bit of it.” 

“Will it make my hair soft or something?” John asks, trying not to snort and wishing it would make his dick soft instead. 

“Yes.” Sherlock ignores the sarcasm and pulls his head back to rinse the conditioner out. “Shut your eyes,” he says, shielding John’s eyes from the suds. When it’s finished, John is all but panting and trying not to. It’s both a disappointment and a massive relief when Sherlock shuts off the water and pulls back the curtain, gesturing for John to get out first, holding out a hand in case John needs it. 

John climbs awkwardly out of the tub, trying to keep his back to Sherlock and picks up a towel with his right hand, letting it unfold in front of his erection. He begins to dry his chest and face with it. Sherlock gets out of the tub and reaches around him for the other towel, not coming around in front of him. Instead, he briskly dries John’s back and arse and the backs of his legs, then his sides and right arm and finally his hair, leaving it standing up in spikes. Despite how good it felt to John, Sherlock’s entire demeanour is one of detached, impersonal care: just a job to be done. Done willingly and with care, but no particular sentiment. John reminds himself firmly of his as he attempts to pin the towel in place with his useless left hand, but he can’t get a grip on it. 

Sherlock watches him struggle for a moment, then says, “Turn around.” 

John does so unwillingly, still hoping the towel will cover his state. Sherlock’s eyes drop immediately to his crotch, however, and seem to get stuck there. Neither of them says a word. Then Sherlock seems to recover and keeps the towel between them as he helps pin it against John’s hip so that he can tuck the other end in with his right hand. John clears his throat, unable to look Sherlock in the eye. “I’ll, uh, just brush my teeth in the morning. Left my toothbrush upstairs, anyway.”

“Right. Yes,” Sherlock says, and if he sounds slightly hurried or distracted, John thinks he knows why and squirms inwardly. Sherlock is still holding the other towel in front of himself and looking at the counter rather than at John. “Good night, then.”

“Good night,” John gets out, and manages to escape the loo and down the hall. 

“John!” Sherlock calls after him. 

John stops and turns back. “Yeah?” 

“If you – require assistance with your pyjamas, just – call down, or text,” Sherlock tells him, still shielding himself and his wet underwear with the towel. 

“I’ll be fine,” John says hastily. “But thank you. Good night.” He disappears up the stairs and into his room, his face flaming. 

He hangs the towel behind the door (which takes two tries as it falls the first time), then looks at his bag of clothing and knows immediately that he isn’t going to bother trying to haul his pyjamas on. Instead, he gets a handful of tissues from the box on his dresser and gets into bed, pulling the covers up to his neck. 

Touching himself with his right hand feels strange, almost like it’s someone else entirely. It also feels _good_ , better than it has any right to, and he knows how fucked up it is that the day he’s discharged from the hospital, brought back to Baker Street since his wife has kicked him out, that he should be lying in bed wanking furiously to the thought of Sherlock’s hands on him in the shower. Maybe this has to do with affirmation, he thinks vaguely. He’s lost a limb; perhaps some part of himself is trying to reassure him that everything else, including this rather important thing, is still in working order. 

And maybe it’s just Sherlock. 

This is a real possibility, and one he’s managed to avoid looking in the eye for a long time now. He’s known, of course, but knowing and _knowing_ are not the same thing. _Sherlock’s fingers in his hair, tugging…_ John pulls at his foreskin with his clumsy right fingers and rubs at the head of his cock and it feels good, good, good… _Sherlock standing behind him, touching his body, his hands on John’s arse and hip bones and in the tangle of his armpits, suds trailing down his sides…_ John’s fist is flying along the shaft of his cock, gripping it tightly and it feels more active, more invested than his rather cursory wanks of late have been, before the accident. He thinks of Sherlock’s eyes stuck on his erection beneath the loose towel, transfixed, those strange, kaleidoscope eyes watching him and knowing how hard he got over Sherlock touching him, and with a tightening of his throat, John comes wetly, forgetting the tissues until it’s too late. 

He waits until his heart rate has slowed to normal before trying to mop up the mess as best he can with his right hand, his cock still tingling with the awareness of what a good wank that was. 

Well. This is going to be interesting, John thinks as he crawls back into bed, having disposed of the dirty tissues. Even if he decides to only shower every other day, there is no way that this is not going to happen again. 

***


	2. Two

**Chapter Two**

 

In the morning, Sherlock says nothing whatsoever about it. John oversleeps, not waking until after eleven. He puts pyjamas on, then gets his right arm into his old striped dressing gown and realises he can’t get it the rest of the way on. He huffs in frustration and stomps downstairs. 

Sherlock is reading one of the papers at the kitchen table. “Good morning,” he says neutrally. He glances up and his eyes stop on John’s half-on dressing gown. He closes the paper. “Need a h - some assistance?” 

“I can’t get my stupid arm into it.” John grits his teeth. 

Sherlock gets to his feet and comes over, going round behind him. He holds the left side of the dressing gown out and says, “See if you can put your left arm in with your right. Yes, like that, just lift and place it inside. Good.” He helps John struggle into it as his fingers catch on the material of the sleeve. He settles it better on John’s shoulders after and asks, “Shall I tie it shut?” 

“Please,” John says stiffly, not looking at him, hating this feeling of being dressed like a doll and still feeling awkward about the shower to boot. 

Sherlock ties the waist sash and knots it in a bow, which looks silly, yet will make it easy for John to untie on his own. “I opened the toothpaste and found your old toothbrush,” he says. “They’re on the counter in the bathroom.”

“Right. Thanks,” John says, getting away with a touch of relief. He goes into the bathroom and relieves himself, then manages to squirt toothpaste onto his toothbrush without knocking it over, brushes his teeth, finds a comb in the cupboard and runs it through his hair, then goes back to the kitchen. “I left the lid off the toothpaste.”

“I’ll put it away later,” Sherlock says. “Hungry?” The question is brisk and impersonal-sounding again: safe, John thinks. 

“A bit, yeah,” John admits, and Sherlock gets up again and immediately sets about preparing food. Breakfast or lunch by this point; John doesn’t even know. Or care. Part of him would have been vastly amused to see Sherlock leaping to his feet to wait on him, once, but it doesn’t seem amusing so much as irritating now. Not that he’s irritated with Sherlock; it’s just that he hates feeling so incompetent. And he’s still angry about Mary. After everything she did, he went back to her, and now she has the gall to kick him out of his own flat, after he’s been disabled? The injustice of it, the sheer unmitigated _gall_. He understands, in a way, that it would have been tough having both a newborn baby and a useless patient for a husband to look after around, but isn’t that sort of what their marriage vows specified? In sickness and in health, for better or for worse? And if he stood by her, in the long run at least, after she had the nerve to shoot his best friend in the heart all to prevent him from finding out who she really was, how does she have the nerve to reject him on any basis at all, ever? 

He is startled when Sherlock sets down a bowl of pasta in front of him. “Sorry,” Sherlock says mildly. “Did I startle you?”

“A bit, sorry,” John says, blinking. The pasta is penne and looks easy enough to stab with a fork in his right hand. Pesto sauce. How on earth did Sherlock manage that in such a short amount of time? 

“You looked like you were rather deep in thought,” Sherlock observes, serving himself before setting the pot down on a hot pad between them. He goes to the fridge. “Is it too early for wine? There’s some sparkling water, if you prefer. Or there’s still more beer. Or I could make tea.”

“Maybe water now and tea after?” John says. 

“Right. We’ll have the wine with dinner, then,” Sherlock decides, and brings out the bottle of Pellegrino. He fetches glasses, fills them, and brings them over, sitting down across from John. 

“This looks good,” John says, looking down at it and forcing a smile that he doesn’t quite feel. 

Sherlock gives him a quick smile, the sort he usually reserves for clients: brisk and sunny and not entirely sincere. “I hope it will be.” The smile disappears. He waits for John to start eating before asking, “So what were you thinking about?” 

John finishes chewing, swallows, and notices that Sherlock hasn’t even started eating yet, his fork dangling from his right hand. “Mary,” he says in response, staring at his penne. It’s a pesto cream sauce, in fact, and is delicious. Sherlock is good with Italian in general and has outdone himself this time. He must have really been deep in thought not to have noticed Sherlock preparing any of this, down to the toasted pine nuts sprinkled over the top. 

Sherlock studies him for a moment, then something seems to click and he remembers what he was meant to be doing with his fork. “What about Mary?” he says, taking a bite. 

“I made a mistake,” John says, and it comes out sounding abrupt and a bit too abrasive. “I can’t stay married to her. I just can’t.” It’s such a relief to just say it out loud, at last. 

Sherlock chews, swallows, and picks up his glass of water to drink before responding, as though stalling for time. “Because she didn’t want you to go home,” he says after, the words obviously chosen carefully. 

“That was the last straw. Yeah.” John clears his throat. “She lies to me from day one. She shoots you to keep the secret buried, then tries to shoot you again in Leinster Gardens, acts completely justified throughout, never once apologises or will even admit to any guilt whatsoever in all that, and now this. Having the nerve to dump me on you when she nearly eliminated you from my life all over again. All of it. I’m finished. I’m just – completely and utterly finished.” He looks up to find Sherlock’s eyes on his face, his lips set, and demands, “Come on, can you really blame me?” 

Sherlock shakes his head, but says, “I’m in no position to offer an opinion that wouldn’t seem biased. Wouldn’t _be_ biased.” His voice is quiet, the words almost an admission. 

(But what is he admitting?) “Because she shot you,” John tries, hypothesising, watching Sherlock’s reaction. 

Sherlock takes another deliberate bite of his pasta and chews it for what feels like an inordinately long time. “Yes,” he says at last. “Among other things.” He meets John’s eyes again and says, “Oh, come on, John. You’re my best friend. Obviously I would be biased in your favour. Obviously I stand to gain if you leave Mary. How can I possibly offer a neutral perspective?” 

“Well, when you put it like that,” John mutters, and feels a slight pang of disappointment that Sherlock didn’t give any other reasons. 

“This is still a – very new situation for you,” Sherlock adds, a bit delicately. “I wouldn’t advise making any major decisions at this point. You’ve had a shock. And with the baby coming soon, there will be a lot of factors to consider.”

“True,” John agrees, his voice hard. “But one that I’m absolutely sure about is that I am completely finished with Mary. Hopefully we’ll be able to come to some sort of civil decision that splitting would be for the best for all concerned. That’s not up for debate, for me. Not when she’s hung me out to dry like this. It’s not just that, but it’s the last straw. Or several straws past the last straw. I’m out.”

Sherlock watches him for a long moment, then nods and looks down again. “I see,” he says to his pasta. 

They drift around the flat for the rest of the day, not talking much. Nearly every time John tries to do anything, he discovers a new obstacle. Opening his laptop. Typing. Using a track pad with the wrong hand. At one point, Sherlock asks if he wants to get dressed “properly” and John demurs. Pyjamas and a dressing gown were hard enough, frankly. Sherlock doesn’t argue, returning to whatever he’s reading on his laptop. Eventually he makes dinner and they eat (chicken stir-fry with the white wine in the fridge) and John tries not to notice Sherlock doing the washing up after, too. He feels useless and like a nuisance. 

Sherlock lights the fire and John watches him strike a match and is reminded of yet another thing he can’t do one-handed. He sits with his laptop open on his lap but isn’t looking at it so much as staring into the fire. Sherlock notices after a little while. “Bored?” he asks. 

“Not exactly.” John doesn’t particularly feel like elaborating. 

He feels Sherlock’s scrutinising gaze linger for a moment or two, then he suggests, “Why don’t we start thinking about bed soon, then? First day of rehabilitation tomorrow. It’s bound to be tiring and stressful.”

“Says who?” The question sounds rude, but honestly, what would Sherlock know about it? 

“I’ve been doing a bit of reading,” he says, evidently not offended by John’s brusque question. 

John sighs. “I see,” he says ungraciously, and closes his computer and puts it on the floor with his right hand. He’d wondered if Sherlock was still hunting for information on Moriarty and is privately surprised to find that it was actually all about him. 

Sherlock’s eyes follow him as he gets to his feet. John accidentally tries to use both hands to push himself out of his chair and nearly stumbles to the left. “Shower?” Sherlock asks. 

John hesitates, thinking of last night’s shower. “Er,” he says, then doesn’t know how to finish. What to say. He can’t just never shower again. 

“It will help your spirits,” Sherlock says. He looks up at John, his face carefully arranged to avoid any semblance of expression whatsoever, blandly polite. 

Is he trying to persuade him? John debates silently for a moment. “All right,” he says without any particular enthusiasm, shifting his weight. “I doubt that, but I might as well. Then I won’t have to do it in the morning.”

“Precisely.” Sherlock sounds satisfied. “Let me know when you’re ready, then.”

“I’ll just brush my teeth.” John goes down the hall and shuts himself inside the loo. The mirror shows him a tired, dispirited person. His marriage is over, he’s become incapable of just about everything, and just to make things _really_ great, he can’t seem to control his long-hidden attraction for his best friend anymore. Not when they’re showering together, at any rate. He could wash his own hair, he supposes, but getting the bottles open is a challenge. And there are parts of himself he can’t reach with his right hand only. He sighs again and takes the toothpaste out of the cup where they keep it and their toothbrushes, and realises his problem. 

Sherlock knocks lightly at the door from his bedroom. “John?”

“Yeah,” John says, watching in the mirror. 

Sherlock opens the door. “I forgot,” he apologises, coming in. He’s already stripped down to his pants, which are black again. He reaches past John for the toothpaste, quickly uncaps it, and disappears again without another word. 

John knows he should say thank you, but instead woodenly picks up his toothbrush and sets it on the counter, then painstakingly squeezes toothpaste onto it. He watches himself brush his teeth and hates everything. His face is getting stubbly, too, and he has no desire to try shaving it yet. If he says anything, Sherlock might offer to do that for him, too, which would be humiliating. He spits, rinses his mouth and toothbrush, then begins to undress himself. The dressing gown is made easier by Sherlock’s bow knot, though the sleeves are still a bit difficult. John wrenches it off and then gets his jumper and jeans off. The button is the most difficult part, not helped by the fact that the pressure near his waistline puts pressure on the incision from the minor surgery. Once he’s in his underwear, John has a look at the bandaging and realises it will need changing. After the shower, then. The socks come next, then he calls Sherlock. “I’m ready.”

Sherlock opens the door at once and comes in, going to the taps. “We should probably change your dressing, I was thinking,” he says. 

“Yes, I thought that, too,” John says. “After.”

“Yes. There’s no point now if you’re just going to get it wet.” Sherlock turns on the shower and steps inside first this time, not closing the curtains. 

John steals a look at him. Sherlock’s eyes are closed, water running over his chest and down his stomach. John glances at his face to make sure his eyes are still shut and then lets his gaze drop guiltily to the black underwear. He looks quickly away, already feelings the unwelcome tightening below decks. Bad decision. He looks down at himself and decides it isn’t too visible. Not yet, at least. He wrestles off his underwear and kicks them toward the laundry hamper. This time he manages to get into the shower without stumbling, and pulls the curtains shut. They’re on his right, so at least that’s simple. 

Sherlock pulls him back by the shoulders, stepping back out of the water so that John can be in it, and this time he’s already involving himself more actively, combing water back into John’s hair with his fingers. “I read today that massage can be relaxing,” he says. “For the paralysed limb, but also for the muscles which will have had to compensate for the new imbalance.” 

John’s eyes are closed under the stream of water. He blows some of it off his lips and says, “If you’re trying to say you want to give me a massage, I suppose you can.”

Sherlock makes a sound somewhere between satisfied and pleased, but doesn’t say anything in particular. He opens the shampoo bottle and begins to repeat what he did last night, rubbing it into John’s hair and scalp. Again, it feels terribly good. John’s scalp has always been rather sensitive and he likes having his hair touched. No one has ever gone at it with this much enthusiasm, though – or what feels like enthusiasm; he knows that Sherlock is only being methodical. Of course he’s been reading about limb paralysis. How is that even a surprise? John realises in retrospect that it should have occurred to him hours earlier; Sherlock has spent all day on his laptop, except when he was cooking or cleaning something. He closes his eyes and tries to enjoy it, but just in a normal sort of way. Sherlock is actively massaging his scalp this time, though, not just washing his hair. His fingers continue down to John’s neck, his thumbs pressing into the base of John’s skull. It feels good. Really good. For the first time all day, John feels himself beginning to relax a bit. He hadn’t known how tight his shoulders were. 

The massage migrates to his shoulders, Sherlock’s long fingers and thumbs digging into the muscle between his shoulder blades and John hears himself exhale deeply. Sherlock makes a barely-perceptible sound of satisfaction, again, and pulls John’s head back under the water, rinsing out the shampoo. He slicks conditioner into John’s hair and gets a handful of his expensive, spiced shower gel and resumes the massage, starting in on John’s left arm. 

This makes him tense up again, and Sherlock notices immediately. “Relax,” he says sternly. “You won’t help it that way.”

“I know that,” John says, his teeth gritting. He opens his eyes and notices that, despite his discomfort in having Sherlock touch his dead arm, he’s sporting a bit of wood. Oops. Can’t be helped. Though if anything could, having Sherlock do what he’s doing might be the ticket: a solid reminder of his disability could be as effective as a bucket of ice water. 

Sherlock’s fingers knead his upper arm, which he can feel just fine, then start in on the forearm. It feels decidedly odd: John can feel the pressure in his upper arm but nothing in the lower part at all. Mercifully, he stops doing that after a bit and goes back to John’s right shoulder and the arm on that side before returning to his scalp. He stops for more shower gel and gives some to John again. “Wash yourself,” he says, his mouth a bit closer to John’s ear than he’d been expecting, and it almost startles him. 

He accepts the palmful of gel and starts applying it to his stomach and chest as Sherlock smoothes it over his back and shoulders and sides and arse and suddenly his erection fills out significantly again, bobbing upward in the steam at full billow, as it were, and John is mortified. He closes his eyes and prays Sherlock won’t see it this time and write him off as the horniest arsehole in England. He’s fairly certain that Sherlock’s gay if he’s anything, and God knows he’s attracted to Sherlock, but – all of the reasons why this would be awkward as hell and completely problematic are still what they are. 

He’s had just time to think this when Sherlock pauses infinitesimally, then reaches around and begins to stroke his cock with the same methodical touch he’s been using for the rest of the massage. John’s eyes fly open, the breath leaving his lungs so quickly that he feels faint. He should protest – should say something, loudly – but nothing comes to his lips. He closes his eyes again. It feels _insanely_ good to have someone touching him like this again, after so long. Far better than it should, almost as though the sensation is novel again. He should deny that he wants this, say something firm but not unkind and he should push Sherlock’s hand away. Sherlock is standing just close enough to him that John can feel his body heat, his proximity, but no other part of Sherlock is touching him. John experiences a mighty internal struggle, trying to summon the will to stop Sherlock from doing this, from wanking him off in the shower. Obviously he noticed John’s erection – noticed and decided that this is the best, most practical option for dealing with it. Maybe calling attention to how strange this is would only humiliate Sherlock. He probably thinks it’s just a physical impulse. 

Said physical impulse is currently throbbing in Sherlock’s left fist, which is gripping and sliding along his shaft with obvious practise and John suddenly wonders again for about the thousandth time if Sherlock really is a virgin, like Mycroft implied, though that was pre-Janine. Although, from this angle, it could just be solo experience contributing to the skill of Sherlock’s hand and wrist. He assumes Sherlock does _that_ , at least. He wills himself to keep still and just let Sherlock do this, not letting himself hold Sherlock’s fist to thrust into it – much as he wants to. He exhales louder than he might have, just a gust of breath, but it’s magnified in the shower and sounds ten times louder than it should. And Sherlock may actually be telepathic, because his fist has just sped up to match John’s unspoken plea, jerking him quickly and silently, squeezing tight around the head before plunging down the shaft again. It makes John feel as though he’s fucking Sherlock’s fist even if he isn’t moving, holding himself rigid as his orgasm nonetheless rises from his toes and threatens to spill over Sherlock’s long fingers. Sherlock does it again, several times, and John’s breath hitches and gets stuck in his throat as he comes. It sprays over Sherlock’s fist with the force of a fire hose – it’s been way too long since anyone touched him this way, and even then, the last person was Mary and she didn’t often do this anyway and regardless he can’t even think about that right now. His breath unglues itself and gushes out through his clenched teeth, his dick still spurting and Sherlock’s hand slows, still stroking him until the convulsions have stopped. His hand disappears then, giving John a moment to collect himself. 

He’s still breathing hard when Sherlock brings his head back under the water to rinse out the conditioner, and still when the water shuts off. Sherlock pulls back the curtain and John steps out of the tub, reaching for a towel to bury his face in before Sherlock can see it, before he has to look at him and acknowledge that this just happened, that Sherlock just gave him a hand job in the shower. He has no idea, none whatsoever, how to react to this, what to say. What it meant, if anything. Will Sherlock expect him to say thank you? Turn around and return the favour? (Is he even hard?) Is he supposed to kiss Sherlock now? Acknowledge it in any way at all? John has absolutely no clue. 

He feels a towel patting down his back and he thinks that Sherlock’s touch feels slightly awkward, even through the padding of the towel. John rubs his own towel through his hair and down over his chest. Sherlock dries his right arm and side for him, then stops touching him altogether. He slips past John, his own towel wrapped around his narrow waist, and opens the door to his bedroom. “Good night,” he says, his voice completely neutral, and doesn’t wait for a response, pulling the door firmly closed behind him. 

John goes still. He listens very hard but hears nothing from Sherlock’s room at all. He looks at himself in the mirror as he brushes his teeth and thinks blankly, _What the hell was that? Did we just have sex?_ Very one-sided sex, albeit, but… He does a hurried job towelling his hair dry so that he can escape upstairs to his bedroom, remembering only then that they both forgot completely about changing his damp bandaging. He lies awake trying to make sense of it for hours. What on earth was Sherlock thinking? Showering together is already rather more intimate than any two platonic friends would normally do, at least male friends. He knows that Sherlock is frequently out to lunch when it comes to social cues, but honestly – even he must know that touching someone else’s cock is basically off limits unless you’re in a relationship, or in some sort of place where that’s explicitly acceptable behaviour, like a sex club or something. Did he think he was just… continuing the massage south of the border, as it were? Did he interpret John’s erection two nights running as a sign of sexual frustration and think that John was incapable of taking care of it on his own? Has he somehow divined that John always used to use his left hand for that and that he’s now unable to satisfy himself with his weaker right hand? Has he guessed John’s latent attraction to him? Is he trying to instigate something? Was that pity or attraction or some twisted take on logic? John stays awake until past three, trying to make sense of it, but is at a complete loss. 

All he knows is that, weirdness and personal humiliation aside, it felt better than anything he’s felt in longer than he can remember. The last serious highlight of his sexual life was a one-night stand with a woman half his age, about a month before he and Mary started dating. Elaine Something. Long, thin legs and a mop of long, wavy dark hair and a wicked smile with an even more wicked tongue behind it. The blow job she’d given him in the loo of the restaurant they’d gone to had been nothing short of spectacular, yet he’d never called her again. Even he could see by then that everything he’d liked about her only reminded him of Sherlock. She was too close to home, not that Sherlock had ever even thought distantly about putting his mouth on John’s cock. 

Or perhaps he had. Everything is turned upside-down now, because Sherlock touched him. And was _good_ at it, too. It figures, John thinks. Sherlock is good at everything he does. With the possible exception of interpersonal relationships, though John’s had little reason to complain. Witness this: his own wife throws him out and Sherlock agrees to take John home with him, nurse him through the early stages of his newly-disabled life, even bathing him – all things that only a wife/life partner should be doing. Not one’s best friend, no matter how close they are. 

He can’t decide how he feels about it. Nor how he’ll be able to look Sherlock in the eye tomorrow, or ever again. He certainly can’t bring it up over breakfast, and besides, tomorrow is the day that his physiotherapy starts. Won’t this make everything terribly awkward? What if Sherlock wants to do it again the next time they shower? Thinking about this – the very thought of it alone – makes John hard again. It’s past three and he should be sleeping, but even as he reproaches himself, his clumsy right hand is sneaking into his pyjama pants and curling around his cock, beginning to pull at it. He closes his eyes and feels Sherlock’s hand on him again, and he shamefacedly wanks to the memory of it. And knows that if Sherlock does want to do it again, he won’t be able to say no. 

*** 

They interact very little in the morning. Sherlock’s walls of neutrality are all firmly up when John comes downstairs in his pyjamas. He makes breakfast and they eat in silence, shielding themselves in the newspapers and then their laptops after. John reads through his facebook newsfeed and clicks on the thirty-seven notifications he hasn’t dealt with yet, sighing. Sherlock announces after awhile that he’s going to the shops to buy some groceries but that he’ll be back well before it’s time to go to John’s rehab appointment. John makes a sound to show that he heard and Sherlock leaves. The solitude is frankly a relief. He’s cautiously glad that Sherlock has been relatively distant all day so far. Not talking about it is clearly the best option, as he has no idea what Sherlock was thinking at the time or whether he thinks now that it was a good decision or not. John knows that it wasn’t, but can’t stop thinking about it, either. He knows he wants it but that’s not the point, is it? 

He feels a rumble of hunger and decides to try to make himself lunch rather than wait for Sherlock to come home and do it for him. He goes to the kitchen and settles on trying to make a sandwich. Everything his eyes fall on show new things he can’t do now – soup would mean a can opener: impossible to do one-handed. Slicing the bruised bit off a peach in the fruit bowl with no way to hold the peach steady. Tea, he can manage, so he puts the kettle on and then proceeds to use his dead arm to hold the bread bag semi-steady as he extracts two slices. There’s the last of the ham and it hasn’t gone off yet, so John puts it on the bread and realises that it’s going to be a rather dull sandwich, as he cannot access any of the condiments in their jars. Standing at the counter, he eats around the bruise on the peach and throws the rest away, then takes two bites of his sandwich and gives up on it. The bread it too dry without mustard or mayonnaise or something. And on second thought, the ham may not be as fresh as it should be, after all. John sighs and abandons it. 

Sherlock returns twenty minutes later with the shopping. John thinks again that it would be more satisfying to watch him weighed down with all the bags under different circumstances. As it is, it’s nonetheless a bit of a miracle to see Sherlock reduced to doing this for him. He could have just let Mrs Hudson do it, John reminds himself. That does say something. 

Sherlock sets down his bags and looks at him. “What?” 

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” 

“You were smiling,” Sherlock says, almost suspiciously. 

“Not really.” 

“Yes, you were. You were smiling.” Sherlock takes out a bag of apples and puts them down on the kitchen table. “Not very much, but you were. What was it?” 

John shrugs. “You. Shopping. That’s all.” He keeps his tone cool and light, lest it come out sounding too affectionate. 

“Ah.” Sherlock sounds unbothered as he continues to unpack the groceries. His eyes fall on John’s uneaten sandwich. “What’s that?” 

John feels his shoulders tighten a bit. “Sandwich. Turned out the ham wasn’t so good.”

Sherlock’s eyes are still on it. “And it was a bit dull without any condiments, I imagine.”

John hates him having guessed and doesn’t acknowledge this. 

“Never fear,” Sherlock says, and pulls out two bottles with a flourish, holding them up for John to see. “Look what I found at the store.”

John gets up and goes over to see. Sherlock is holding two new bottles of mayonnaise and mustard, both of which are squeeze bottles, ones that he could use if someone else takes the seals off first. His throat tightens. “Thanks,” he says, keeping his eyes on the bottles. “Those are – great.” 

“Should help,” Sherlock says, nicely refusing to take notice of him getting stupid over this tiny thing he’s done. He uncaps them then and there and removes the seals, then puts them away. “You can make a new sandwich. I bought salami this week. Okay?” 

“Yeah,” John says, still looking down at the table. “Fine.”

“And I was thinking that we should leave for your appointment around half-past one,” Sherlock continues. He stuffs the empty bags into the bag of bags under the kitchen sink and goes to the fridge to get the bread out again, along with the salami he just put away. “Mustard or mayonnaise?” he asks, and it’s almost too much: too caring, too – not like himself, even. John hates that he’s being so light and impersonal and that it’s all a mask to cover whatever he’s really thinking or feeling, and yet how can John expect him to do anything else when a tiny gesture of thoughtfulness like these condiments are making him react so stupidly? 

“Mustard,” he says, sounding like a moron, as though it’s the mustard that’s got him all choked up. This is ridiculous. 

Sherlock glances at him and John can feel it as sharply as a laser probing into his brain. “I’m going to toast mine,” is all he says, though, keeping his observations to himself for once. 

At the appointment, Sherlock comes in with him and John doesn’t tell him not to, though he’s in two minds about it. Sergio is brusque but not unkind. He spends three hours going through exercises, some of which are meant to potentially stimulate the damaged nerves in his left forearm and hand, and some of which are meant to teach him how to do things with his right hand, or how to compensate when he needs two. John is clumsy and slow to learn, and it doesn’t help that Sherlock is there, eyes watching everything keenly, not missing a thing. He asks the occasional question and Sergio responds as though Sherlock’s questions are all brilliant, which John isn’t ready to concede. He knows he’s being grumpy and difficult, but having Sherlock there to witness his lack of coordination puts him on edge. Sherlock asks about massage, too, and Sergio tells him that it’s clear he’s been reading, and agrees that massage could be very beneficial, indeed, particularly for the muscles which will now be compensating on the other side of John’s body. After awhile John thinks that Sergio has forgotten he’s even there, though Sherlock hasn’t. His very awareness of John’s presence is tangible, somehow. 

They finish by talking about strategies John can use for situations that present themselves, including using the dead arm as weight, as John has already discovered. Sergio gives him a list of exercises to do in preparation for their next session on Friday. Lastly, he delivers a strangely stern lecture to Sherlock about not doing too much for John – which is odd, John thinks testily, as Sergio has seemed enamoured enough with Sherlock for the past three hours. 

Sherlock is unmoved. “I thought you said last time that John and I could establish the parameters of how much assistance I give ourselves,” he says, his gaze direct and unblinking. 

“Yes, to an extent,” Sergio agrees, glancing at John. “But just now he will need to practise these new motions on his own.”

Sherlock blinks once, then seems to make some sort of internal decision. “Yes,” he says. “Agreed.” 

Sergio smiles and stands, and doesn’t try to shake either of their hands. In his line of work, John imagines that he’s used to that by now, to patients who are unable to do even that much. He sees them out and Sherlock hails a taxi. Neither one of them speak much on the way home. John is still feeling grumpy. His right arm is tired and his upper left arm, too. The rest of it, of course, doesn’t feel like anything at all. He feels it as dead weight, nothing more. It feels alien and he almost just wishes he could have it amputated, if it weren’t for the extremely unlikely chance of the nerves repairing themselves someday. He sighs and turns his head to look out the window, avoiding Sherlock, avoiding everything. 

That night, Sherlock asks if he wants to shower and John squirms. “Er, not tonight,” he says awkwardly. 

If Sherlock is disappointed or relieved, he conceals it well. “Good night, then,” he says, eyes on his laptop screen. 

“Night,” John says, and escapes upstairs. He tries to pretend he isn’t thinking about it even as he gropes into his pyjama pants with his fumbling right hand to touch himself, curling in around it as he gets himself off, but knows that it’s Sherlock’s hand he’s feeling. 

*** 

Sherlock stops offering help the next day. John comes downstairs in his pyjamas, his dressing gown half-on. Sherlock is sitting at the desk, typing something. John goes over and half turns away in anticipation. 

“Would you mind?” he asks, assuming Sherlock will know what he means. 

Sherlock doesn’t move to do it, though. Instead he sits back, from the sounds of it, considering. “Have you tried getting it on yourself?” he asks. 

John bites back a rude comment. “You know I can’t,” he says, and it’s still sharp despite his efforts. 

“What have you tried?” 

John jerks around and glares at him. “The same thing I ever try! I go to where it’s hung up and get my right arm inside, then can’t get it the rest of the way on. You know that!” 

Sherlock’s lips tighten a little, but he doesn’t back down. His eyes are skating over John’s face and chest, deducing something or other. “Why don’t you try using your right arm to get it on the left and see if you can’t get it on that way?” he suggests. 

John grits his teeth together. He isn’t going to beg, though. Instead he goes into the kitchen and puts the kettle on before heading into the loo to brush his teeth. Today Sherlock hasn’t uncapped the toothpaste, either. Apparently his streak of helpfulness is finished; he’s decided to take Sergio’s words directly and immediately to heart. John picks up the tube, holds the cap between his molars and twists with his right hand, spitting the cap across the room. He knocks his toothbrush over while squeezing out the paste and gets toothpaste on the counter. He glares in the mirror at the dressing gown hanging stupidly off him as he cleans his teeth. Once that’s finished, he puts his toothbrush back into the cup next to Sherlock’s and decides to tackle the dressing gown – here, where Sherlock can’t see him struggle. 

The method Sherlock suggested works surprisingly well, actually, and in retrospect John feels stupid for not having thought of it himself. Pinning the sash against the counter, he manages to tie it in a loose knot. Grimly satisfied, he exits the loo just in time to switch off the kettle and make tea. Sherlock does not offer to make breakfast and John doesn’t ask. He makes himself some toast and has an apple from the bowl on the counter. Proteins can wait, he supposes, not particularly caring at the moment. 

It’s like this all day: Sherlock doesn’t do any of the things which he has been doing for the past few days, and John decides that he just isn’t going to ask. Sherlock is probably trying to help, but part of John wonders if he’s somehow upset about John refusing the shower last night. John feeds himself and slowly, grimly types emails with one hand. So many people have somehow heard about the accident and have written and all he can write back is variations of _Yeah, my left hand and arm are paralysed_ and that’s about the end of the exchange. 

Mary hasn’t been in touch at all, not that John wants to talk to her, but he’s nonetheless furious. He writes a long, painstaking email, typed one letter at a time, to his sister, who has demanded a proper update on his injury. He explains that he is living at Baker Street and that Mary has refused to let him go back to the flat. Harry will love that; to date she has only met Mary twice and hated her from the moment she laid eyes on her. It was quite mutual; Mary treated Harry with barely-concealed contempt in return and John decided as of their second meeting that it would be the last. Family time is overrated at the best of times. Still, Harry should know that his brief, fatally-misguided marriage is ending. She’s the only family he has left, after all. John sends the email at last and closes his laptop with a feeling of relief. 

It’s dark, he realises. What time is it? Sherlock’s voice interrupts his thoughts before John can even look around for a clock. “It’s past eleven,” Sherlock says, his tone neutral, not looking up from the tome he’s reading. 

“It’s later than I thought,” John says. It’s the first time they’ve spoken in hours. 

Sherlock stirs and closes his book. He looks over in John’s direction but not right at him. “Were you planning to shower tonight?” 

The question is so lightly inflected that it almost doesn’t even sound like a question. John clears his throat. “I suppose so, yeah.”

Sherlock gets out of his chair and puts the book he was reading on the desk. “I’ll be in the bedroom until you’re ready, then.”

“Why?” The question is sharper than he intended. 

Sherlock stops walking but doesn’t turn around. “Why what?” 

“You’ve left me on my own all day, but you’re still going to help me shower?” John says, the words more petulant-sounding than he’d intended, too. 

Sherlock sighs and his shoulders drop half an inch. “Believe it or not, I _am_ trying to help you become more self-sufficient,” he says. “But a break can’t hurt. Reading fora online has illustrated that showering is one of the activities many people find the most difficult after the loss of a limb. Or the use of a limb.” He hesitates, then turns slightly. “If today was unsatisfactory, we can discuss it. Tomorrow, perhaps. Or at your appointment on Friday.” 

John feels slightly remorseful; Sherlock really is just doing his best to help him. Still, he can’t help feeling slightly resentful, anyway. Being completely cut off without a warning was a bit abrupt, after all. Sherlock could have warned him he was going to take Sergio’s advice so immediately and so completely. Well, nearly completely, if one excludes the showering thing. After a moment, seeing that he’s evidently not going to respond aloud, Sherlock starts walking again, disappearing down the hall into his room. John follows after another minute or two, his mind already racing forward and wondering what this shower is going to bring, whether or not he’ll be able to control himself, whether or not Sherlock will even want to do that again. Maybe he’s already realised for himself that it was a mistake, if it was. (Was it? John is still in two minds about this. It certainly didn’t _feel_ like a mistake.) 

He goes into the loo and closes the hall door and watches himself in the mirror as he slowly, awkwardly takes off his dressing gown and pyjamas one-handed. He didn’t even get dressed today. The bags under his eyes are deep, as are the lines around his mouth, and he thinks again that he looks tired, old, and completely unattractive. There is pudge gathered at his middle that never did go away completely and probably never will. And his stubble is starting to verge more into beard territory than a few days’ overgrowth. It simultaneously softens the line of his jaw and makes him look sloppy and unkempt, he thinks, rubbing at it. And there’s far too much grey in it. He looks weary, he thinks critically, and wonders whether anyone in their right mind would ever want to shag him again: a forty-three-year-old soon-to-be divorcé with a child, a dead arm, and an unshakeable attraction to his best friend. And said best friend will never be attracted to him, especially not now. He’s only trying to be helpful or kind or something, in his own, strange way. No: there won’t be anyone else. He’s always known that, somehow. 

John sighs and takes off his underwear, putting them in the laundry hamper. “I’m ready,” he says, aware that Sherlock is waiting on other side of the door leading to his bedroom. 

Sherlock comes in, already stripped down to his underwear. Black again, John notices, his eyes sliding guiltily south before he can prevent them. Sherlock slips past him and turns on the taps, testing the water with his hand. “All right,” he says, nodding John toward the tub. John gets in. Sherlock takes a moment longer, reaching for something in one of the cupboards, then joins him, pulling the curtains shut. “Turn around,” Sherlock says. 

John frowns and does so, facing Sherlock and stepping back so that the water hits his chest rather than his face. “What? Why?” 

Sherlock brandishes a razor with a slight smile. “Just this once,” he says. “Next time, you’ll do it.”

John resists almost just on principle. “Maybe I’m growing a beard,” he says stubbornly. 

“Don’t be an idiot. You hate it.” Sherlock overrides him, gesturing with the razor. “You’ve been frowning at it in the mirror. You don’t like the grey. And you’ve never in your life deliberately grown a beard. Leftover military habit, likely. It’s not that it wouldn’t suit you, but it makes you feel unkempt. And it’s difficult so you’ve been avoiding it.” He reaches for a bottle of something and squeezes it into his hands, holding the razor in his teeth. 

John closes his eyes as Sherlock rubs whatever it is over his face in a gesture too brisk to be interpreted as tender. He’s hyper-aware of the fact that he’s facing Sherlock, naked as the day he was born, fighting the urge to cover his cock, but Sherlock doesn’t seem to have noticed. John opens his eyes when Sherlock takes hold of his chin and jaw with one hand, then begins to shave his face. It’s a surreal experience, being shaved by someone else. John’s never experienced before, at least, never let a barber do it or anything. It feels strangely intimate. Sherlock’s face is intent with concentration, shaving him in careful lines, following the natural whorls and oddities of John’s facial hair growth. And when he gets to John’s throat, John feels himself begin to harden again. He closes his eyes in mortification and begins to pray that Sherlock is nearly done. 

It’s only a few moments later that Sherlock is pulling him under the stream of water so that it does hit him in the face, washing off the scented shaving lotion or whatever it was he used, and then Sherlock’s hands are turning him around and reaching for the shampoo bottle. He washes John’s hair with the same amount of dedicated care that he’s given it before, and John can’t help shivering under his touch and trying not to lean into it. Without asking, Sherlock massages his neck and shoulders and arms again, the very opposite of his absolute lack of attention or help during the rest of the day. By the time his fingers are tugging on John’s earlobes, John is harder than anything, his cock absolutely aching to be touched, and touched specifically by Sherlock. So when Sherlock’s hands wander south and stop on his hipbones, a small questioning sound resonating in his long throat, John can only nod and then Sherlock is touching him again, at last, thank _God_. John’s eyes are closed and he hears himself exhaling hard as Sherlock’s hands work over him. Sherlock is bending forward, his face close to John’s ear, possibly to avoid his front touching John’s back. The proximity is uncomfortable at first, but after another minute or two, John doesn’t even care. He’s breathing hard as Sherlock strokes him with both hands, one massaging his lower belly, soft as it is, and then wandering lower to tug at his balls and slip along the crease of his thigh. It’s as though he has a blueprint of John’s sexual stimuli tucked away in his mind palace somewhere and is consulting it closely as John huffs out breath into the steamy air and tries not to actually moan out loud. An orgasm is building in his balls and gut and when it comes he nearly thrashes in Sherlock’s arms at the power of it. Trying to suppress his reactions seems to have made it all the more powerful, and his release splatters the far wall as he comes, a choked breath gusting almost painfully out through his clenched teeth. 

Sherlock continues to touch him as he comes down from it this time, his fingers gentle, washing away any traces of the mess and trailing over John’s skin, his back and hips and arse and stomach all getting some attention as he breathes hard, spots clearing from his vision. He feels good, if slow and heavy, hardly aware of Sherlock tipping his head back into the water to rinse out the conditioner, nor of Sherlock moving him out of the water so that he can rinse his own hair. John realises that he wasn’t even aware that Sherlock was washing his own hair at the same time, so absorbed was he in his own sensations. Embarrassing as this is, these showers are rapidly, if reluctantly, becoming his favourite part of the day. It’s worth it to have Sherlock make him do everything for himself if he makes up for it like this in the shower every night, as though in reward for John’s struggles. 

Sherlock shuts off the water and steps out of the tub, reaching immediately for a towel and passing another to John. “We should change that dressing,” he says, speaking for the first time since he started shaving John’s face. As though nothing unusual has just happened. “I forgot the other night, and then last night I should have suggested it.” He stops talking, as though unwilling to remind John that this is likely related to their mutual awkwardness over the subject of showering in the first place. 

“Right,” John says, not looking at him as he pats his front dry. “You’re right – it really should be changed tonight.” 

Sherlock briskly towels off John’s back and right side as he has been doing regularly and speaks over it, as if trying to distract from the fact that he’s doing just that. “The stitches should dissolve on their own. Does it hurt at all?” 

“Not really,” John says, also striving to sound normal. “It itches and sometimes it aches a little, but it’s healing well, I think.” 

“Let’s have a look.” Sherlock turns him around and leans him up against the counter and John feels manhandled and tries not to resent it, but it’s instinctive. Sherlock’s long fingers pull off the sodden, loose bandaging easily and he very gently pats the wound dry before quickly wrapping the towel around his wet underwear. 

He doesn’t manage it quickly enough to prevent John from sneaking another guilty look, though, and his mouth fills with saliva when he sees that Sherlock is definitely aroused, the front of the wet briefs bulging outward. The towel comes over it then, disguising the erection somewhat, but not entirely. John suddenly remembers how quickly Sherlock went into his room the other day, after the first time he got John off in the shower and wonders if that was the reason why. He’d just thought Sherlock was feeling awkward. But this – the information has paralysed his brain, barely aware that Sherlock is cutting gauze and placing it over the incision. (What if he were to pull the towel off and slip his hand into Sherlock’s clinging, wet briefs, back him into the wall, and jerk him off? Would he like that? How would he react? Is he even attracted to John or is he just – taking pity on his newly disabled friend and just happened to get aroused by witnessing (and bringing off) John’s orgasm?) John thinks again of the way he looked in the mirror and the fantasy fades into a quick death. It has to be pity. And he’s in no position to just take charge like that, with only one hand and arm to work with. How would he even pin Sherlock to the wall? And a sloppy hand job with his weaker right hand would frankly be embarrassing to deliver. He’s always prided himself on his skills in bed, but this is not, as Sherlock would say, his area in the first place. And with his compromised manual skills… no. It just isn’t in the cards. John sighs and forces himself to drop the fantasy. 

Sherlock finishes affixing medical tape and straightens up. “There you are,” he says, and for a moment, John looks up and lets their eyes meet. He doesn’t know what Sherlock sees in his, but for a moment the air between them is intensely charged. 

John thinks of the looseness of his belly that Sherlock has touched and cringes internally. His eyes drop to the smooth, firm, pale expanse of Sherlock’s muscled abdomen and reality digs its claws in even more firmly. “Thanks,” he says shortly, meaning the bandaging. “Good night.” 

Sherlock’s lips compress so minutely that he nearly misses it. “Of course,” he says, his voice low but almost completely expressionless. “Good night.” 

John goes to the hall door and pauses. “Leaving at one-thirty again tomorrow?” 

“Yes. We’ll get a taxi,” Sherlock says. 

The pause lingers. “You don’t have to come,” John asks awkwardly. “Aren’t you looking for a case or something? What about Moriarty? Aren’t you still looking for him?”

“No.” Sherlock is quiet. “My brother has taken charge of that case for the time being.”

“Because of me,” John says, testing. 

“Yes.” He doesn’t deny it. “I meant it when I said that I would stay with you. And I’m coming to your session tomorrow. And every one after that. For as long as it takes.”

John doesn’t know what to say, but it makes him feel awful. Absolutely wretched. In the end, after a moment of painful agonising, he can’t think of anything to say, so he just opens the door and leaves, trudging upstairs to his room. 

He pushes the uncomfortable subject out of his head and wonders instead about Sherlock’s erection and whether he’s doing anything about it now that John has left him in privacy. If he’s standing there in the loo, fisting his cock in those same, long, firm strokes that he uses on John, or if he’s gone into his bedroom, the wet pants left on the bathroom floor, lying on his back and stroking himself, maybe even looking up at the ceiling at John. He wouldn’t, though, would he? John has no idea, but the very thought of Sherlock touching himself creates an ache low in his gut, kindling and warming his flesh. Restless, he finally falls asleep, only to wake in the night, furiously pulling at his cock and in his imagination, Sherlock is all around him, touching him everywhere, his mouth on the back of John’s neck, and John makes a mess in his sheets. 

*** 

“Do it again,” Sherlock orders, and John glares at him. 

“I’ve already done the five sets Sergio said,” he growls. 

“You skipped half of the last one,” Sherlock insists. “Do it again.”

“You’re not my physiotherapist,” John says testily, starting the final set of reps over again. 

“He told me to make sure you do it.” Sherlock is immoveable. 

“Great, so now the two of you are ganging up on me,” John huffs, going through the motions again. 

Sherlock is unfazed by this. “Stop complaining. It’s for your own good and you know it. I’m just helping you stay on track.”

“Right, and refusing to help me button my damned coat was helping, too.” John is angry but he knows all of the anger isn’t directed at Sherlock. He does know that much. But it feels guiltily good to just vent it and Sherlock is more than able to take it. He probably knows that it isn’t all about him, anyway. 

“You’ve got to learn to do it for yourself,” Sherlock says, responding to what he said. 

“I know that, damn it!” John finishes the set and collapses into his chair, his forehead sweaty. “Put the kettle on.”

“ _You_ put the kettle on,” Sherlock says, opening his laptop in his chair across from him. His eyes glance up and skim over John’s face and chest, probably disgusted by his sweat, John thinks. 

“Come on. Don’t be an arse for once in your life.” 

Sherlock smiles slightly. “No.”

John kicks him in the knee. 

“Ouch. That hurt.” Sherlock refuses to get angry, though. He also isn’t budging from the chair. 

John glares again. “Tea. Now. Please.”

“Let’s compromise,” Sherlock proposes, getting up at last. “I’ll fill it and switch it on. You can make the tea when it boils.” 

It’s deliberate, John knows. He’s doing the easy part so that John will have to fiddle with the loose tea or tea bags (likely the latter, though it’s almost as difficult getting the damned things out of their packages) and all that. He sighs and slouches down in his chair, probably sweating into the fabric. He doesn’t care. Mrs Hudson can always spray fabric cleaner on it or something. The session with Sergio was long and arduous, and he finished by telling John to practise as soon as they got home, and of course Sherlock had made him do it, bullying him until John gave in with bad grace and started doing the bloody exercises. His bedside manner leaves much to be desired, and he’s relentless. And thoroughly annoying. And furthermore John wishes that he and Sergio would stop bloody flirting with each other, too. 

Sherlock sits down across from him again, smirking. His phone pings with a text then. He takes it out of his shirt pocket and reads it. His face darkens. 

“What?” John asks, watching him. Something about Sherlock’s face makes his stomach tighten. 

Sherlock looks over at him, his mouth tightening. “It’s my brother.” He hesitates. “John… Mary just had the baby.” 

“What!” The word explodes out of him before he can prevent it, and John struggles to his feet, temporarily forgetting about his lack of left arm for support. He towers over Sherlock, rage setting in. “ _When?_ ”

“This morning, apparently,” Sherlock says. His face is serious. “Mycroft just found out. He knows that you should have been told. That Mary was supposed to tell you. He had someone standing by to come and pick us up as soon as Mary let you know.” He pauses again. “I’m sorry, John. I truly am.”

“That _bitch!_ ” He can’t contain himself, fury boiling from every pore. “She deliberately didn’t tell me!” 

“No,” Sherlock agrees. “I thought perhaps that she might have gone into labour quite suddenly, but… Mycroft informs me that it lasted fourteen hours. That should have been quite enough time to have got a message to you somehow.” 

John shakes his head. “I can’t believe her,” he says. “It’s as if she didn’t even think I had a right to be there. My own child!” 

“I know.” Sherlock sounds genuinely sympathetic for once. “Would you like to go to the hospital to see the child tonight?” 

John thinks about it for a second, then nods. “Can we eat dinner first? I’m starving.” 

“Of course,” Sherlock says. He gets to his feet. “I’ll make it.” 

This is a turn-up, isn’t it, John thinks as Sherlock brushes past him to go into the kitchen. He’s left standing there by himself, wondering how on earth he’s supposed to be feeling about this. He feels deflated. Left out. Not overjoyed, the way a new father should. He feels like he’s been completely ejected from the equation. It tastes bitter. He never really saw himself as a father, not that anyone’s ever asked him. He and Mary hadn’t even discussed it when Sherlock informed them at the wedding. He’d known that having kids would have meant certain death when it comes to his current lifestyle, the work he does with Sherlock. Mary told him on the honeymoon that she was not about to become a stay-at-home mother, and John had seen then that she would expect him to take at least half the child-rearing duties. He still wonders how Mary even got pregnant, when they were always so careful, or at least he was. She had been on birth control, though, and he’d always used condoms for precisely that reason. And now it’s all irrelevant, because apparently he’s just unknowingly become a father whether or not he wanted to be one, and the mother of his child didn’t even see fit to tell him that their daughter was born. 

*** 

He is too furious to even speak to Mary at the hospital. Sherlock acts as a shield between them, speaking angrily to Mary. She snipes back, deep circles under her eyes. She looks ten years older, John thinks critically. 

“For God’s sake, spare me the lecture!” she snaps at Sherlock. “I was in _labour_. Making phone calls was not exactly at the top of my priority list!” 

“Nor was it, evidently, at any point after that,” Sherlock returns, his voice acidic. “Where is she? John has a right to see his daughter.” 

“She’s probably in the nursery,” Mary throws back. “I was sleeping, until you got here.”

Sherlock reaches over and presses the call button beside Mary’s bed. A voice comes on over the speaker, asking what he needs. “Yes, hello,” he says into the speaker. “The father of Baby Watson is here and would like to see his child. Please have her brought to the room.”

There’s a pause, then, “That will be just a moment, sir.” 

“Thank you.” Sherlock turns his back on Mary, facing John, who has been hanging back behind him. “Or we can go there, if you like. I just thought this would be more private.” 

“Here’s fine,” John says tightly, looking away. He wishes someone could come and take Mary away when they bring the baby, though. He grinds his teeth together, hating her. 

“I’ll just pretend I’m not here, then, shall I?” Mary gripes. 

“‘Hello, person I married, lovely to see you,’” John says, pretending to be her, the sarcasm thick. “‘How has your physiotherapy been going since I accidentally crippled you? How’s recovery going now that I’ve kicked you out of our home and left you at the worst possible moment?’”

Sherlock gives him a look, but Mary responds before he can say anything. “Right, because everything in the world is about _you_ ,” she spits, her face contorted with anger and indignation both. “I just had a _baby_. You’re a doctor; pretend you understand what that entails, why don’t you! _I_ had a baby, not you! And would you _stop_ blaming me for the bloody accident?” 

“The accident _was_ your fault,” Sherlock tells her, putting a restraining hand on John’s right shoulder. “That much was very clear. And you certainly could have asked how John is faring, regardless.”

“Listen, Sherlock,” Mary begins, her face hard, but John cuts her off. 

“And it’s a damned good thing you didn’t manage to kill Sherlock last summer, or else where would I be now?” he snaps at her, his face blazing with heat. 

Mary opens her mouth to answer, but just then a throat is cleared from the doorway and all three of them look to see a nurse standing there with an infant bundled in her arms. “Sorry,” she says, eyes moving between the three of them. “Is this a bad time? Only, someone called…”

“Yes,” Sherlock says swiftly, going to meet her. “I called.”

“Are you the father?” The nurse asks, smiling at him. “This is Ambrosia.” 

Sherlock frowns at her. “I’m not the father. This is her father,” he says, indicating John. “And how can she have already been named in Dr Watson’s absence?” 

The nurse looks nervous. “I wouldn’t know anything about that, I’m afraid,” she says, with a quick glance in Mary’s direction. “That’s what it says on her bracelet, though…”

“Never mind,” Sherlock says. “Thank you.” He takes the infant carefully and turns away from both the nurse and Mary, bringing her over to John. John watches him, his throat tight, and thinks of the irony of Sherlock Holmes being the first one of them to hold his child. How can he even hold her, though? Sherlock is looking down at her as he stops in front of John. Keeping his voice low to exclude the other two, he says, “Pick up your left hand and hold it tightly at the wrist. I’m going to put her in your arms.”

John does it, his stomach twisting. “Is that a good idea?” he asks, feeling dubious. 

Sherlock’s eyes flick bluely up to his. “It’s your child,” he says firmly. “Yes. It is.” He moves closer, and very carefully sets the baby in John’s cradled arms, the bulk of her weight on his right arm, but doesn’t move away, using himself as a wall to prevent the baby from rolling out of John’s arms. He’s standing very close, his hands on John’s elbows, supporting his arms and the weight of the infant. 

John looks down at her and feels an odd sense of blankness. She looks like a newborn baby, that’s all. He feels nothing, no connection. He’d thought he would feel more excited once she was born, that he would simply _know_ the feeling of being a father once he could actually see and touch his child. Having missed most of Mary’s pregnancy meant missing nearly everything – the ultrasounds, the sonograms, feeling her move for the first time, all of that. He hasn’t been shopping for furniture or having baby showers. He hasn’t decorated or even discussed names with Mary. _Ambrosia_. What the hell! It’s the last name he ever might have picked. He can’t even tell whether it goes with the small, scrunched-up face in his arms. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to be feeling, but he’s fairly certain that he’s meant to feel happier than this. He feels nothing at all, honestly. No sense that this is his child or that some long-awaited moment is finally here. Maybe it would be different if he hadn’t lost his arm and had his marriage more or less end – though when would that even be? The day Mary shot Sherlock (or the day he found out, at least), or the day she rejected him, turned him out of his own home after having paralysed his dominant hand? 

He’s more aware of Sherlock’s presence than he is of the baby’s. Sherlock’s proximity is all around him like a cloud, dizzying. He’s looking down at the baby, his curls brushing against John’s forehead, holding both John and the baby together. It feels intimate, the circle of Sherlock’s arms effectively blocking out the rest of the world. “I can’t believe you have a child,” he says quietly, obviously meaning only John to hear. 

John can’t tell him what he doesn’t feel, not in front of Mary. Can’t tell him that he’s an absolute fraud as a father. That he never even particularly wanted kids and that having one in his arms hasn’t succeeded in changing that yet. (God. What is he going to do?) “I can’t believe she fucking named her without me,” he says just as quietly, his jaw tight. 

“John,” Sherlock admonishes, probably over the profanity. He looks up into John’s face. “I agree, though. Perhaps you can contest it.”

“I’m not calling any child of mine _Ambrosia_ ,” John says, with loathing. 

“What are you two doing over there?” Mary wants to know. “Be careful with her!”

Sherlock doesn’t move, though he gives John a long-suffering look. “Everything is _fine_. John is simply holding his daughter. He has the right, you realise.” 

His self-described bias is showing more than he usually allows it to, John notes with something approaching amusement. “Do you want to hold her?” he asks Sherlock. 

Sherlock gives him another quick, diagnostic look, then nods. “All right.”

He takes the baby out of John’s arms, holding her low enough that John can touch her small hands, still searching for some sense that this isn’t merely a baby, but his own child. He can’t feel it, he thinks miserably. It’s just a newborn. She’s a stranger. Ambrosia Watson. What a name. After a few minutes, he clears his throat. “All right,” he says to Sherlock, and Sherlock looks at him and seems to understand. He returns the baby to the nurse without asking Mary if she wants a turn. They stop in the doorway as Sherlock turns back to Mary. “My brother will be in touch,” he says coolly. “You will make arrangements for John to see his child whenever he wishes. You are not going to be difficult about this. Is that understood?” 

Mary tries to stare him down for a moment, then wavers. “Fine,” she says tersely. “Now get out of my room.” 

They leave without another word. “Well,” Sherlock says in the corridor, under his breath. “I suppose that does rather settle the question of your marriage.” 

“I told you I was done,” John says, scowling. He stuffs his right hand in his pocket and wishes he could do the same with his left, dangling uselessly at his side. It feels like a stranger to him, too. Once inside the taxi, he leans back and closes his eyes and wonders how on earth his life has turned into this. 

In the shower that night, Sherlock massages his tight shoulders and back and arms and scalp, but doesn’t touch his cock. Instead, he puts his arms around John’s shoulders and holds him to himself for a long moment, and John fights back angry, self-loathing, frustrated tears, his shoulders hitching in Sherlock’s arms anyway. After a little while, Sherlock releases him and rinses the conditioner out of his hair. They dry themselves in silence, Sherlock patting down his back and right side for him, as ever, and they part for their respective rooms in silence. 

***


	3. Three

**Chapter Three**

 

On Monday, rehab is awful. Sergio tells him that he’s not making progress quickly enough, that he has a bad attitude, and needs to work harder. He grills Sherlock about whether or not John has been doing his exercises, as though Sherlock has more responsibility over it than John himself does. He makes John repeat one motion with his left upper arm so many times that he can hardly raise it any more, and when he says so, Sergio still won’t let him quit. When the session is finished, even Sherlock is glaring at Sergio. He doesn’t help John into his jacket, possibly mindful of Sergio’s watchful eye, but waits until John’s got himself into it, then tells him quietly to wait outside, if he would. 

“Why?” John wants to know, so irritable that he’s just about ready to bite anyone’s head off at the smallest provocation, but Sherlock doesn’t rise to it. 

“I’ll be right there,” is all he says. 

John huffs and sighs and collapses into one of the chairs in the corridor, exhausted and angry and frustrated. Maybe he _should_ just have the damned arm amputated and be done with it. Sergio says that chances of the nerves regaining feeling should be greatly increased with these stupid, painful exercises in which his upper arm does all of the lifting while his forearm and hand do nothing, their weight straining his biceps and triceps painfully. The chance of regaining his arm and hand is so miserably small that John hates himself for even letting himself hope, but he can’t help it. 

He hears Sherlock’s voice rising and his interest catches. He moves closer to the door and shamelessly listens in. 

“… he’s depressed,” Sherlock is saying, sounding angry. “What’s the point of going on at him until he snaps? It’s not going to help. You don’t know him. You can’t push him too far right now.”

“Look, I know he and his wife just had a baby,” Sergio says. “They told me. I’m sure it’s a big adjustment, but he _has_ to learn to cope on his own. This is the difficult part. He cannot allow himself to be defeated just because he’s lost the use of a limb. Though I’m sure that with the baby – ”

“No,” Sherlock interrupts sharply. “He’s living with me. His wife kicked him out, and she just had a baby. He’s only been able to see the child once. It’s not about that. His entire life has just changed. I just – I need to know how to help him. What to do for him.”

Sergio’s voice drops out of John’s hearing range, and Sherlock’s follows suit. Then Sergio says something else, asks a question or something. 

“Yes,” Sherlock says firmly. “I would do anything for him. To help him through this. What can I do?” 

Sergio begins to talk, lowering his voice again. John hears him mention antidepressants and hears Sherlock reject it immediately, stating that John would never agree to it (he’s right there, John thinks). They continue talking, their voices too low for John to hear without having to strain, so he goes back to his chair and sits down again. He feels a bit stunned, truth be told. Sherlock’s _I would do anything for him_ is taking some time to digest, wrap his head around. The words warm him, as does the memory of Sherlock holding him in the shower last night. Sherlock won’t tell him, it seems, but now all of the pieces are falling into place. What he said about standing to gain if John’s marriage were to end, which it clearly is in the midst of doing. Touching him, whatever his rationale for it has been. Wanting to help, even if his definition of “helping” has frequently meant _not_ helping. Thinking of small things like John not being to open certain things, do certain essential things (like change a dressing) by himself. It all fits, and perhaps it should have been obvious, particularly Sherlock’s quiet self-sacrifice of giving up his work indefinitely, particularly the hunt for Moriarty, all so that he can be there for John. 

And be there he has been. He’s been a rock. John thinks bleakly of what it would have been like if this had happened, the accident and his injury, and he hadn’t had Sherlock to turn to. Being resented and neglected in turns by Mary, trying to find his place as the father in their new family situation. Or what if she had turned him away completely, not caring where he went? He imagines himself in the flat, struggling to dress himself with a newborn howling in the background and Mary griping about his inability to help, and shudders. And knows then with absolute certainty that he is never leaving Baker Street or Sherlock again. There is still so much wrong with the entire situation. He cannot just be Sherlock’s disabled, useless patient for the rest of their lives. But he does not want to leave Sherlock again. And it’s not that he’s unsure of how he feels, or could feel if he let himself, but it’s complicated. Nevertheless, he won’t leave Sherlock. Not ever. 

He hears Sherlock’s footsteps then and looks up. Sherlock comes out of the room and looks around for him. “Sorry,” he says, and doesn’t explain. He nods toward the door. “Shall we?” 

John gets up. “All right,” he says, and follows Sherlock out the door. 

“Hungry?” Sherlock asks, holding the door for him. John sort of hates this, his current thoughts notwithstanding, but goes through it, shouldering his way through the next set himself. “I thought perhaps we could go out for dinner. Unless you’d rather go straight home. I know you’re tired.” 

How has he never noticed how thoughtful Sherlock can be before? John thinks of all the times he’s berated Sherlock in the past for his social cluelessness and reminds himself that Sherlock has been the one to keep the fact that he knows how to behave like a decent human being under wraps, that it wasn’t his own fault for not having noticed. “I am pretty tired,” he admits. “But maybe we could pick something up? Or did you really want to go out?” 

Sherlock glances at him sideways. “I’d be perfectly happy to go home,” he says, after giving John a furtive once-over. “What should we pick up?” 

“Something easy,” John says, not specifying. He admits to himself that he’s pleased by Sherlock’s defence to Sergio, who was a right prick today. Perhaps he should say so. “Thanks for sticking up for me, after,” he says. 

Sherlock’s lips tighten. “He was too hard on you today.” 

“Maybe he thinks that I need it,” John says. “I guess I have been sort of apathetic about it.” 

“When he told you that you should be doing your own reading, I almost said something,” Sherlock admits. “Why should you, when I’m doing it?”

“I’m the one with the lost limb, though,” John says.

Sherlock opens the cab door for him, then goes around to the other side, letting John pull the door shut. He gets in and says, “True. I’d be happy to send you some links, if you’d like to do a little more reading, particularly about the chances of the nerves regaining their use. It’s not regeneration; it’s more that the nerves have been severely bruised, and there _is_ a chance that they could recover.”

“There’s a reason I never went into neurology,” John says, grimacing. “It’s so complicated and uncertain.” 

“That it is,” Sherlock concedes. He looks over. “You haven’t said what you want to eat yet.”

“I don’t care. You choose,” John says. 

Sherlock thinks a bit longer, then says, “Why don’t we get Chinese? That’s about as close as you get to comfort food. We’ll cheat and use forks tonight.” 

John looks over at him in grateful relief and Sherlock smiles at him. And despite his reservations, John’s heart attempts to turn over in his chest and suddenly he feels some of the weight lift off his shoulders for the first time since the accident. 

*** 

Sherlock doesn’t even ask him if he wants to shower that night. He merely comes into the loo while John is brushing his teeth in his underwear (which he changed after dinner specifically with this in mind – they’re navy blue and fit him particularly well) and he’s attempting to suck in his gut a little when Sherlock opens the door and slips into the loo, already stripped down to his own underwear. He turns on the taps and organises the towels, and John doesn’t say anything either when he puts his toothbrush back into the cup, gets his underwear off, and joins Sherlock in the shower, pulling the curtains shut with his right hand. 

Sherlock starts by washing John’s hair and then his own, then gets the shower gel – the very scent of which has started producing a pavlovian response in John’s body – and begins a long and very thorough massage. After the four-hour rehab session, it’s almost painful at the beginning, but in a good way. Sherlock’s strong fingers dig into the hard muscle of his shoulders and upper arms, paying a great deal of attention to his sore left upper arm, massaging the dead forearm and hand with immense care. John stands there, his eyes closed in the water, his cock as hard as anything, and lets himself feel Sherlock actively caring for him, his fingers soothing his strained muscles and aching tendons, and it’s more than anyone else alive has ever done for him or ever would do for him. Not just the shower. All of it. His heart is beating quickly, almost loud enough to hear echoing off the tiles. He lets himself lean into Sherlock’s touch for the first time, revelling in it, and encouraged for the first time, Sherlock responds by touching him even more, his hands rubbing circles into John’s chest and belly and arse. He slicks conditioner into John’s hair, then goes for more shower gel and massages John’s chest, his thumbs sliding over his peaked nipples. His hands trail down John’s front, but stop near John’s hips. “May I?” he asks, his voice low and surprisingly sensual in John’s right ear. 

John’s head nods itself jerkily. “Yeah,” he says. Then adds, “Please.” It’s the first time they’ve ever acknowledged this aloud, and it feels intensely significant. Sherlock has just asked permission to touch him, said it out loud, acknowledging verbally what they’re doing for the first time, and John’s eyes nearly roll back in his head in pleasure as he does it. And tonight, Sherlock stands closer to him than he ever has before, close enough that he is pulling John back into his chest as his long fingers stroke and pull at John’s cock, tugging at his balls and pressing into every little place that increases the pleasure in any way, as though he knows John’s body more intimately than John himself does, and it feels so good that John almost wishes he could put off coming until dawn and just do this all night, let Sherlock’s hands stroke and stroke until he more or less explodes from the build-up of silvery pleasure shivering through his veins. 

Sherlock gets even closer to him, a long-fingered hand pressing into John’s chest, and John feels it then – Sherlock is hard. Very hard. John’s eyes open in the steam, and suddenly he sees that this entire thing definitely hasn’t only been about his shameful, secret, uncontrollable desire. It was never only pity. (So Sherlock doesn’t find him that unattractive, after all! His erection two nights ago wasn’t just a coincidence!) Fire blazes in his belly, fire that has nothing to do with the tightness in his balls or the hardness of his cock. It’s that he simply has to reciprocate at last. He turns around in Sherlock’s arms to see Sherlock’s startled face, the colour high in his cheeks. “John, what are you – ”

John shuts him up by kissing him, backing him into the back wall and out of the water, using his thighs to pin Sherlock up against the tiles. He can’t do anything with his left arm, though he wants very much to put it around Sherlock’s shoulders, pull his face down and hold it there. But at least he’s able to do what he needs to do with his right, which is to rub at the front of Sherlock’s wet underwear, his fingers tracing the thick outline of Sherlock’s cock through it. Sherlock is gasping into his mouth, hips bucking forward. He rallies quickly and pulls John closer to resume stroking him as John’s hand fights its way into Sherlock’s underwear to grasp his cock, using the suds trailing down Sherlock’s torso for lube, and it’s all very fast and very needy. They’re panting into each other’s mouths, creating even more steam clouds to billow around themselves, jerking each other off desperately. John comes first, having had a head start, and he breaks away from the kiss to gasp as the orgasm shakes through him, watching his cock spurt out ribbons of hot come onto Sherlock’s stomach. Sherlock moans, closing his eyes again. His mouth is open, breathing hard as John resumes what he was doing, his fist flying over Sherlock’s cock until his voice rises higher than it usually does and then he stops breathing as his abs tense up and he comes all over John’s belly and chest. There’s a second round and then a third, more than John usually comes, and even after, John can’t stop touching him, feeling the weight of Sherlock’s balls in his hand and touching his cock even as it twitches, feels it softening in his hand, and he’s kissing Sherlock’s throat and chin and feeling Sherlock’s breath grate in his throat as he pants against his forehead. 

Then Sherlock looks down into his eyes and their mouths find one another’s again, Sherlock’s arms coming around his shoulders, and some conditioner has got into John’s eye and is stinging a bit and he couldn’t possibly care less. Sherlock backs him into the stream of water again as they kiss and kiss and kiss, his large hands rubbing down John’s back and over his arse and John almost feels like he could go for a second round in another five minutes or so. It feels so good – not just the orgasm, but having arrived at this place with Sherlock, being able to do this with him, feeling so intensely cared about. They’ll still need to talk. John is a long way from being ready for any sort of relationship with anyone these days, but he can’t deny this any longer. He can’t deny himself and he can’t deny Sherlock any longer, not knowing that Sherlock feels this way. 

He’s cognisant of Sherlock’s fingers rinsing out the last of the conditioner, and then the water is shut off. John feels light-headed with the release, both physical and emotional. Sherlock dries him face-to-face and John does his best to dry Sherlock with his right hand, and partway through both towels get forgotten and slide to the floor as they start kissing again. He doesn’t want to talk. He just wants to do this all night. After awhile, Sherlock opens the door leading to his bedroom and makes a questioning sound in his throat. John makes one of agreement in his, and they move jointly into the bedroom. Sherlock doesn’t pull away to go around to the other side of the bed or anything, just yanks the covers back and they tumble into it together, limbs thrashing as Sherlock gets the covers around them. He doesn’t seem any more inclined to talk about this than John does, which is a relief. Tonight, at least, all John knows is that he wants this, needs this, needs Sherlock, and that’s enough. 

Even when they break apart for breath, they don’t speak. Sherlock’s eyes are searching his, their faces close together on the same pillow, their legs and arms around each other. Sherlock took his left arm and held it around himself and now it’s trapped under him, pinned into place, so that John’s right arm is free to hold him, touch him. Sherlock pushes the hair back from John’s shower-damp forehead, looking at him with an expression not unlike wonder, and John realises that the same look is all over his own face. He’d never known, never had any idea that Sherlock could be like this – this passionate, this intensely sensual, this caring. He feels awash with it, dizzy, and rather startlingly – happy isn’t the right word. It’s deeper than happiness; it’s a sort of joy that starts out in his bones and is aching its way to the surface. He feels complete, even if he knows they’ll need to talk. He isn’t fit to be with Sherlock right now – he’s useless to him in the field, and only even has one hand to touch him with, which seems desperately unfair, given how long and how much he’s always privately, secretly wanted to touch him. But it wasn’t pity, then. None of it was pity, in the shower. Sherlock does want him. Does desire him, unattractive as he feels these days. John instinctively closes the space between them and puts his mouth on Sherlock’s again. 

Sherlock makes a sound into his mouth, his tongue pressing into John’s, and then his hand is touching John again, caressing his half-hard cock and stroking it into full hardness again. John does the same and they kiss and tug at each other, their legs intertwined, and it feels somehow, strangely, even more intimate than full-on sex has felt with pretty much everyone John’s ever been with. Sherlock is getting closer, his sounds growing more urgent. He wraps a leg around John’s back and arse, their knuckles bumping together and then their cocks are rubbing and pushing together, caught in both their hands and it feels so intensely good, feeling Sherlock’s cock against his. John groans into his mouth before pulling off to pant against Sherlock’s chin, hips pumping forward as the orgasm works its way through his body like a drill. He comes, his entire body feeling it, flushing from his face to his navel, and as he does, Sherlock makes a desperate sound and thrusts hard into their hands, his leg tightening around John and then there’s a burst of warm wetness on John’s belly and in their hands, then another as Sherlock buries his face in John’s shoulder, gasping. 

He pants against John’s skin for several minutes, his back heaving, and John tries to get his own breathing under control, his heart hammering in his chest. Sherlock lifts his face and looks into his eyes, his face so full of emotion that it hits John like a brick, and then he’s kissing John again and it’s no less passionate than it was before. John winds his good arm around Sherlock’s back again and holds him close, drowning in the intimacy of it, drowning in Sherlock, in his vulnerable, defenceless openness. He has never seen Sherlock like this in all the time they’ve known each other, and his heart is jangling and aching and reaching out, trying to tear its way out of his chest to bury itself in Sherlock’s for good. He can’t say anything stupid, though. Not yet. Not until they’ve talked about this properly. He settles for kissing Sherlock as deeply as he knows how, feeling closer to him than he’s ever felt to anyone, ever. 

They fall asleep that way, eventually, the kissing slowing after awhile, but neither of them moving so much as an inch away from each other. John falls asleep with Sherlock’s lips on his forehead, and when he wakes in the night, neither of them have moved all that much. It’s too good to miss any of it, even in sleep, John thinks blurrily. He shifts even closer to Sherlock’s heavy, warm sleeping form and lets himself fall back asleep. 

*** 

He wakes again in the morning to find Sherlock’s eyes on him. He blinks, almost startled, then remembers everything that happened last night. His face begins to smile before he can help himself, and looking a bit relieved, Sherlock smiles back. 

“Good morning,” he says. His hands are tucked beneath his chin, his knees and legs still touching John’s. 

“Hi,” John says. “Been awake long?” 

Sherlock’s shoulder moves in what might be a shrug. “Just a little while.”

“Were you watching me sleep?” 

Sherlock blinks. “Yes.” It’s direct and unapologetic. 

John can’t even bring himself to say something about this. He doesn’t know what to say, but after a quick check, he decides that he’s still quite happy about all this, despite his reservations. “Hi,” he says again. 

“Hello,” Sherlock says, and leans over and kisses him, breaking the slight awkwardness between them. It’s just a small kiss, but they’re still touching and naked in bed together and it qualifies as quite wonderful in John’s head, at least. It feels right, re-establishing everything that happened between them. Because now they’ll have to talk about it. Neither of them seemed to want to say a word last night; it was all just silently agreed upon, but now it’s time. It’s necessary, John thinks as the kiss ends, Sherlock’s hand warm on his side. His own arm has wound itself around Sherlock again and the proximity and the heat of his skin feel like a drug. 

He pulls his face back far enough so that he can see Sherlock properly. “So,” he says, not sure where or how to begin. 

Sherlock’s face looks a touch wary. “So,” he echoes, and waits. 

“Last night,” John says. “That was – ”

He feels Sherlock tense up very slightly. “What?” he says, when John doesn’t finish. And then, “Don’t tell me you’re – ”

“I’m not regretting it,” John says quickly, still holding Sherlock. “Not at all. Not in the slightest. But I was thinking that we should talk.”

Sherlock sighs. “I thought you would say that. Now?” 

“Might as well be now,” John says. 

“Can I go and make some tea first?” Sherlock asks, sounding almost plaintive, as though he suspects the talk is going to be difficult. “I can bring it back in here.”

John caves. “All right,” he says. Then, on an impulse, he puts his hand on Sherlock’s face and says, “But come back quickly.” He kisses Sherlock again, to reassure him, and Sherlock echoes his gesture, putting his hand on John’s face, and John lets himself lean into it for a moment, happier than he should be, feeling it down to the bone, and not really wanting to have the talk, after all. (But it’s necessary. It really is.) 

Sherlock pulls away with obvious reluctance and gets out of bed on the left side, goes around it and disappears down the hall. After switching on the kettle, or so John assumes, Sherlock goes into the loo, the light of which has been on all night, running water and disposing of the towels that are probably all over the floor. John hears him brushing his teeth. After, Sherlock discreetly closes the door and relieves himself, then washes his hands and goes back to the kitchen. He comes back two minutes later with two mugs of tea. 

John has got himself into a sitting up position, dragging himself with his right arm clinging to the headboard of Sherlock’s bed to do so, finally getting himself settled with the blankets across his lap. He’s got a bit of morning wood that he hopes will keep itself to itself for the time being in spite of the presence of an extremely attractive, very naked Sherlock in bed beside him. He accepts a cup of tea and Sherlock comes back around to get carefully into bed again. 

“So,” he says, blowing on his tea. “What do we need to talk about?” 

John draws his knees up a bit and balances his tea on top, holding it with his good hand. “I don’t know where to start,” he says slowly. He takes a sip of tea and tries to rallies his thoughts into order. 

Sherlock making a thinking sound. “I assume it’s related to – this,” he says. “To a change in our manner of relationship.”

“Yes,” John says. “To us becoming this, instead of just friends, if we’re going to do that.”

“Do you want that?” Sherlock asks, cutting directly to the chase. He turns his head and looks John in the eyes, his face rather intense. 

“I… I think I do,” John says, feeling his brows come together. “I just have… well, reservations.” 

“Tell me, so that I can debunk them all,” Sherlock says instantly. 

John gives a small laugh. “I’m not sure it’s that simple,” he says, taking another sip of tea. 

“Try,” Sherlock instructs. “Is this about being with a male? Being perceived as homosexual?” 

“Hang on,” John says, a touch exasperated. “I’m getting there. I just have to – figure out how to say all this, exactly. Just – give me a second, here.” 

“Okay,” Sherlock says, subsiding, and he immediately sounds less certain of himself. 

John thinks for a long moment, then starts carefully. “Look… I know how some of this is going to sound, and I – but first, you should know that most of it has nothing to do with you, all right?” Sherlock makes a neutral sound, so he goes on. “I’ve always been a physically small person. Always the shortest boy in class. Always picked on because of it. When I got old enough, I got into enough fights to prove that I was worth taking seriously, but it was always like that. I always had to prove it. Even joining the army, I took flak for being in the medical corps rather than the front lines. People assumed it was because I was too weak, physically. I can’t tell you how much I hated that.”

“Naturally,” Sherlock says, frowning. 

John wishes that his left hand worked so that he could reach over and touch Sherlock with it, but Sherlock is sitting on the left side of the bed, where he was sleeping, which had allowed John’s right arm to be free to reach for him. Never mind, he supposes. He takes another sip of tea instead. “When it comes to dating and that – I never wanted to be seen as – I never saw myself as – no. How can I put this? Basically it comes down to this: if I’d been with another bloke, people always would have assumed that I was the ‘woman’, the submissive one, and I would hated them thinking that. Just assuming that they knew everything about the relationship from the outside, when they don’t know me and wouldn’t have known whoever I was with. As long as I dated women, they always assumed I was the one in charge. Not that it’s about being in charge, but I just hate being treated like a… like – ”

“Like less than you are,” Sherlock supplies quietly. 

John glances at him. “Exactly,” he says. “And besides… well, being straight is obviously easier, even these days, and no bloke I met was ever worth the hassle, I suppose.”

He stops in case Sherlock wants to say something, but Sherlock is staring straight ahead, his eyes unseeing, not moving. 

“Until you, that is,” John adds, his voice low. “You _know_ I’ve been attracted to you from the start. Always. From day one. I just – you never seemed interested. I don’t think you were, back then, so I – but then, when you came back, I felt it all again and sort of wished I hadn’t got engaged so quickly. It was such bad timing. Obviously my entire marriage was a colossal mistake, one that nearly cost you your life and would have put me through the whole terrible ordeal of losing you all over again. I’m glad that things with Mary are over. It was never going to work, anyway.” He gives a short laugh. “I mean – you’ve been doing everything for me that a partner should be doing. Coming to therapy with me. Looking after me. Even showering with me. You _are_ who I want to be with. There’s no question about that.”

“Then what is it?” Sherlock asks, looking at him directly now. His eyes are very blue and somehow he looks rather young, John thinks. Unsure of himself. 

He wishes he could do something to reassure him, show him a bit of affection or something, but he can’t with what he’s got to say. “It’s – me,” he says, his voice tight. “I’m a mess right now. And I’m useless to you, and I hate that.”

Sherlock looks at him, startled. “John – you can’t possibly – ”

“No, let me finish,” John interrupts, insisting. “I’m newly disabled. I’ll likely always be disabled. I’ll probably get better at taking care of myself and being less of a burden on you, but – I can’t be your partner in crime any more. I can’t even be a doctor any more. I can’t tell even tell you how lost and purposeless I feel these days. I overheard what you said to Sergio the other day, and you’re right. I _am_ depressed. I haven’t even been able to motivate myself to read about my own injury, or disability. I honestly feel like I don’t even know who I am any more or what the point of my life is, if I can’t be or do any of the things I’ve always imagined of myself.”

Sherlock sounds pained. “John…”

“It’s true, and you know it is,” John insists. “I can’t do any of it any more. And I can barely even be anyone’s lover, one-handed.”

“Not that I’ve anything much to compare it to, but you managed fine last night,” Sherlock says, with a sidelong look that brings heat to John’s face.

He suddenly thinks that it’s the very opposite of how Mary made him feel, not just that disastrous time after Christmas, but in general. He’d never got the feeling that she thought that sex with him was anything more than _nice_ , which is a condemnation in and of itself. John pauses, warmed by this, but makes himself continue. “No, but – listen, Sherlock: everything you said about me to Sergio was right. I’m not coping with this particularly well. I don’t know how to deal with having lost everything that makes me who I am. I don’t seem to have any interest in being a father. I felt nothing whatsoever when I was holding the baby yesterday. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. And until I do… I just feel it’s unfair to drag anyone else into the mess of who I am right now. To let myself get too dependent on you in every way, and I feel that if we decide that we are definitely doing this, then it’s not fair on you.” John takes a deep breath. “That’s it, or most of it.”

Sherlock is silent for a moment. “Say the rest of it, whatever else there is,” he says after a bit. “What are your other reservations?”

“Well – ” John hesitates, then takes another sip of tea to stall. “It’s related to the whole submissive thing. I just don’t really see myself that way in a romantic relationship, and that’s our dynamic, isn’t it? I’m your assistant, your right hand man, or I was. You give the orders and I chase after you. And that’s been fine. It’s your work and I tag along. That’s how it’s always been. I just don’t want that in a romantic relationship.” 

Sherlock waits, then asks, “Is that all? Of your reservations, I mean.”

“Yeah, I think that’s about it,” John says. “I mean, it’s all just tied into that – being disabled means that you’ve been taking care of me, opening doors for me, even dressing me sometimes, and I’ve needed it and asked for it and appreciated it – ”

“But it makes you feel inferior,” Sherlock finishes, understanding. He sighs. “May I respond now? I do have a rebuttal or two, if you’ll permit me.”

“Go ahead,” John says. “Believe it or not, despite having said all that… I do rather want to be convinced.”

Sherlock looks at him closely. “Do you?” he asks, completely serious. 

John nods. “I really do.” He feels a bit wistful. He had to say what he said; it wouldn’t have been right otherwise, with him thinking all that and never telling Sherlock. But he feels rather as though he’s killed it from the start. 

Sherlock takes a deep breath and looks down at his hands, which are resting on his knees. He seems to have abandoned his tea on the night table. “For what it’s worth, I quite understand about your stature and not wanting to be automatically perceived as the… less dominant partner, I suppose. I don’t see why there has to be a less dominant partner. We’re both fairly headstrong people. My experience is obviously very limited, but my understanding of partnership doesn’t work on a greater-than/less-than basis. Regardless, I do see how that perception of you would be automatically reversed in the context of a heterosexual relationship, particularly with a physically small woman. Failing of our narrow-minded society, I suppose. And I am taller than you, so – yes. I do see. And I can easily understand how and why it would be a sensitive point for you. It infuriates me that anyone should have made mock of your choice to serve in the medical corps. Most people would argue that medicine is one of the nobler careers to choose, and to not only choose that, but to serve in an active war zone as a doctor on top of it – ” He shakes his head. “People never fail to astound and disappoint, do they?” 

“Unfortunately not,” John agrees. He wants to touch Sherlock. “Go on with your rebuttal.”

“I suppose I haven’t refuted anything so far,” Sherlock says, grimacing. “In the work, the work we do – it’s not only my work, you know. Not now. Not any more. But John – this is a real rebuttal now – when you defer to me, it’s because I have the superior knowledge or experience. But when it’s a question of medical knowledge or – social propriety, or – anything that you know more about than I do, I defer to you. I always have. Do you not realise that?” 

John’s mouth opens, then closes again. “I hadn’t really thought of that,” he admits. 

“Well, think of it,” Sherlock tells him. “It’s true: when you know more than I do, we do things your way. When I know more than you do, we do things my way. I’ve always thought we make rather good partners because we do that already, defer to one another as the situation demands. And if we apply that logic to the concept of this sort of relationship, which of us knows more about all of this? You, who have been in many relationships and a marriage, no matter how dysfunctional, or me – so barely over the line that the term ‘virgin’ is still technically accurate, with no experience in love whatsoever? Unless one counts years of unrequited, unfathomable longing.”

John’s head turns quickly. “Years?” he repeats, feeling his eyes soften as they find Sherlock’s. They’re lowered, his face troubled. 

Sherlock nods and looks up, meeting his gaze soberly. “I never thought of anything like it before I met you. There just never seemed to be any point. But then I met you. I cannot possibly pinpoint the moment it began, but… yes. Always, John.”

“I thought that was my line,” John says, his throat tight. 

Sherlock picks up his numb left hand and holds it in both of his. “We both wanted it. We just didn’t know how to get there. Or I didn’t, at any rate. I was furious with Mary for turning you away, but was nearly angry with myself at how overjoyed I was that you were coming home again, that I was going to be the one to be with you during this. It’s a privilege, John. Truly. You spent nearly six months taking care of me after I was shot. I can be entirely content with accepting that you are more of a carer than I am. But can’t our friendship, or – what we are now – can’t that accommodate me returning the favour a bit now, when you’ve been injured? It hardly makes me think any less of you.”

John feels the back of his eyes sting. “But that’s all just hypothetical now, anyway,” he objects. “Because now I’m – I could never be the – I don’t want to say ‘the dominant one’. I don’t even like that terminology.” 

“Neither do I,” Sherlock says, his brows knitting together. “As I said, I don’t see either of us as particularly submissive people, except when the occasion arises that one of us defers to the other. But I do think we’re rather well-balanced. Can’t we just – be who we are, and not worry about that sort of thing?”

“We can,” John acknowledges. “And I like what you said about us already naturally deferring to one another when the other knows more. But far from being ‘dominant’, I don’t even feel like an equal player, that I have anything to contribute. I hate feeling like the burden, the one who has to be looked after, and that’s all I’ll be to you. I knew for certain yesterday that I never want to leave you again. But I don’t see how this could possibly not have some kind of effect on a relationship between us, you having to look after me forever. Not being able to come with you to crime scenes, not being able to shoot your enemies off your back. I mean, remember that case in early December, just after you started working again? The time when we were by the bins behind Harrods and the thief fired at us? I got you down on the pavement just in time. Now I could never do that.”

Sherlock smiles, inexplicably. He takes John’s tea out of his hands and sets it next to his, then turns back and puts his arms around John’s shoulders. “John,” he says, sounding unmistakeably fond, his voice low and velvety and tender, “you could have stopped that idiot with both hands cuffed behind your back, and you could have saved me from being shot with no arms at all.”

John looks into his eyes, startled by this. “You really think so?” he asks, the words choking him. 

“I know so,” Sherlock says, and leans in, stopping just before his lips touch John’s. “So please drop this nonsense about not having anything to offer. You could stop a tank just by looking at it.” He does kiss him then and John kisses back hungrily, wanting desperately to believe him, that Sherlock really thinks of him this way, that competent, even now, like this. But something tells him that Sherlock genuinely does. He turns toward him, getting his right hand onto the back of Sherlock’s neck, squeezing it as they kiss. Sherlock is kissing him firmly, yet it’s rather gentle at the same time, and it’s exquisite. There’s no other word for it. By the time it finishes, John still doesn’t want it to stop, stroking his thumb across Sherlock’s cheekbone. 

“You’re sure?” he asks, searching Sherlock’s eyes. “You won’t mind being stuck with me – like this, with my hand?” 

“‘Mind’ is hardly the word,” Sherlock tells him. “And besides which, I don’t see why you can’t still come with me when we have a case, or resume medical practise, if you wish. Of course there will be some things that you won’t be able to do. You’ll learn how to compensate as time goes by. And the nerves may still recover.”

“Don’t say that,” John says, but he touches Sherlock’s face again to take out any sting. “I’d rather just accept it, and not hope.”

Sherlock accepts this and drops the subject. “As for the baby, I think it’s perfectly understandable. You weren’t really a part of the pregnancy process. Thanks to Mary, you weren’t there when she was born. You’ve missed out on some of the first things that allow a parent to form attachments, I would think. But it’s not too late. It may still happen.”

“I’ve never seen myself as the paternal sort,” John admits. “I really – I don’t know, Sherlock. I felt _nothing_ , holding her. She just seemed like any other baby to me.”

“Please, John,” Sherlock says, his voice patient. “You’ve just been through some of the worst experiences of your life. Seven months ago, your best friend nearly died and you found out your wife was an internationally-wanted assassin. Then you nearly lose your best friend to a suicide mission, find out that Moriarty is still alive, get into a car accident and lose the use of your dominant hand, have your wife reject you and your marriage fall apart, and then have a daughter born. You’ve been depressed. It’s perfectly understandable. Your feelings may change, especially when you start feeling more like yourself again. Wait and see.”

“And if they don’t?” John asks, feeling dubious. 

Sherlock pulls his face closer and kisses him on the cheek, the corner of his jaw, then his neck. “Then I will love you regardless,” he says, his voice a bit muffled, his long fingers cradling John’s face. “What you feel for your child has no bearing on that. I’m not disappointed in you. On the contrary.”

“You love me?” John repeats, his heart coming into his throat. He leaves rest of it. Suddenly it seems much less important. 

Sherlock makes an affirmative sound, then pulls back and looks into his eyes. “Rather a lot, in fact.” 

“Sherlock – ” John reaches for him again and they kiss again and this time it’s desperately needy on both sides, their tongues pressing and pushing together, lips closing around one another’s, and John moves his hand to Sherlock’s chest to feel his heart beating. Sherlock is crowding him up against the headboard, his knees inserting themselves around John’s sides, straddling him. The blankets get shoved down, three hands clawing at them, anxious to get skin-to-skin again. Their cocks are rubbing together now and John experiences a fleeting thought that if this is his newfound purpose in life, to be with Sherlock like this, then the future won’t be that awful, after all. He’s managing, sort of, clasping his own lifeless wrist around Sherlock’s back, just so that he can feel Sherlock completely in his arms. Sherlock’s are dug between his back and the headboard and they’re thrusting together, breathing into each other’s mouths. It’s absolutely extraordinary, John thinks dizzily; he hasn’t been inside Sherlock’s body and yet, just as it did last night, he feels closer to him than if they were chemically bonded. He wonders suddenly if Sherlock’s words about them both being dominant people means that he will want to do the penetrating, or if he means they should take turns. As he thinks this, one of Sherlock’s hands slides under him to grip at one of his arse cheeks and John groans before he can help it, not that he would have bothered trying, and recalibrates. Yeah. Okay. Maybe the arse stuff wouldn’t be that bad at all… He’s touched himself there, got a finger or two up there while getting himself off (not that he’ll ever be able to do that again). Maybe it’s not that different. And maybe it doesn’t matter as much as he’s been telling himself it would. 

Sherlock pulls back. His face is flushed and slightly sweaty, stray locks sticking to his forehead. “Do you want to just – do this, or – ”

John searches his face, then lets go of his own hand so that he can push Sherlock’s hair back from his forehead. “Are you asking because you want to do something else, or because you think I do?” 

“The latter,” Sherlock tells him. “Or rather, I wondered if you might.” He clears his throat and clarifies. “That is, I wondered if – what you said before was an indication that you – might want to… ” He looks uncomfortable, the red staining his cheeks even more deeply. “This is difficult.”

John can’t help smiling. He kisses Sherlock, feeling terribly affectionate. “It’s all right. Just tell me. What did you think I might want to do?” 

Sherlock clears his throat again, not quite meeting his eyes. “Be – inside,” he says. “You know. Have sex. Proper sex.” 

Saliva fills John’s mouth as the very concept. “Do you want that?” he asks carefully. 

“I want to know what you want,” Sherlock says, stubborn. “I want to do anything you want to do. Within reasonable limits, I suppose.” 

“But do you want _that?_ ” John asks, curious. “Is it something you want to try? Or are you just asking because you think that I do?” 

Sherlock’s look is almost sly this time, though his cheekbones are still stained with his flush. “Both.”

(Ah.) John feels his own heart rate spike in anticipation already. Good God. He feels as though he’s just won a lottery. “I wondered what you would think about that, about who would do what.” 

“I want to try everything,” Sherlock says, his voice low and intense. He leans forward to hide his face in John’s neck, kissing it and touching the side of his face. “If you’re amenable, of course..” 

“You could say that I’m definitely – amenable,” John says with difficulty, his cock pulsing where it’s touching Sherlock’s. “But if all this is a bit new – don’t you think it’s a bit soon for – that?” 

Sherlock pulls back to look him in the eye and he’s smiling now, though John still detects a trace of embarrassment. “Please, John,” he says, almost scoffing. “When have you ever known me to do anything by half-measures?” 

“Fair point,” John says, and he’s already nearly out of breath, just considering that this is honestly about to happen. He’s going to fuck Sherlock Holmes. Lucky he’s already sat on his arse or else his knees might give out. He swallows hard. 

Sherlock sees it and his eyes crinkle at the corner. “My thoughts precisely.”

“You don’t even know what I’m thinking,” John says, his feelings suddenly mixing. On the one hand he wants nothing more, but… 

Sherlock gets off him to open the drawer in the night table on John’s side of the bed. “Au contraire,” he says. “I know exactly what you’re thinking. Or at least I hope I do.” He gets back on the bed, pressing the tube into John’s right hand, then stops, looking at his face with concern. “But if you don’t want to, or not yet – that’s fine.”

John’s thoughts tangle themselves into a knot. He takes a long, shaky inhalation, then says, “It’s not that I don’t want to.”

“But – ” Sherlock’s eyes rake over his face. “Is it – it is too soon, then?”

“I just – ” John partially covers his eyes, not letting go of the lube. “I can’t make this what I would want it to be. If I had my way and knew that you wanted this, and it was the moment for it – I know exactly what I would want to do, how I’d want it to go. It’s so – _limited_ , like this, with me barely able to move myself.” 

Sherlock is silent for a long moment, looking at him, his face intent and a bit worried, his mouth set. Then finally, when John is about to say something to break the silence, which isn’t uncomfortable, but – Sherlock opens his mouth and takes a breath. “I see,” he says. “I do. I understand.”

“But – ” John is worried he’ll move away now. He puts his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder to prevent it. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to do anything. Just – I don’t think I – ” God, this is agonising, he thinks. Mortifying. 

Sherlock doesn’t pull away from him, to his credit. He still looks concerned, but nods. “Whatever you want, then,” he says. 

John swallows, trying to stop feeling like such a useless lump of worthlessness. “Could I – kiss you?” he asks jerkily, hating himself for having killed the mood. Both of them have softened considerably since he backtracked and changed his mind. 

Sherlock’s face shifts into an expression that John has never seen on it before, one he’d be at a loss to put into words. “You don’t ever have to ask,” he says, and puts his mouth on John’s. It starts slowly, then builds again. Sherlock gets closer to him as it goes, his arms circling John’s shoulders, pressing into his torso, and John feels him start to get hard again, and knowing it provokes his own flagging erection to stiffen up again, to his relief. The kiss becomes heated, John clutching at Sherlock with his right arm, the tube still clenched in his fist. Sherlock pulls him over so that John is on top of him, and it’s good. They’re rubbing together now and Sherlock’s hands are on his arse and he can feel their balls touching, the soft hair of Sherlock’s causing his every nerve ending there to prickle as though with electricity. “Lube,” Sherlock says, his mouth mashed against John’s. John brings it around in front of them, holding it as Sherlock’s long fingers unscrew the top and toss it across the bedroom. He squeezes some into John’s hand and John reaches down and slicks it over them both. They moan in tandem, Sherlock’s cock twitching against his. Sherlock puts both hands back on his arse and John braces himself on his right arm and begins to thrust against him. _This_ – this is good. He’s on top of Sherlock and can control his own movements, how fast or slow it goes, not particularly compromised by his left hand/arm, and it feels frankly ungodly. Sherlock’s eyes are half-closes, his lips parted, straining up against him, their cocks trapped between their stomachs and sliding together, and it’s definitely going to be enough, John thinks hazily. More than enough. 

Sherlock’s breaths begin to get shallower, his hands squeezing harder than ever, and then his entire body convulses beneath John’s as he comes. A shout tears itself out of his throat partway through as his body spurts between them. John groans and starts going faster, wanting the intense pleasure to last forever, but also wanting to get there. Sherlock is panting, his cock still twitching, but he’s saying John’s name and pulling him upward. John gets it after a split second of confusion. He’s straddling Sherlock’s chest now and Sherlock is pushing himself up on one elbow and simultaneously pulling John’s cock to his mouth, and – John nearly dies when those lips close around him. He moans loudly, unable to control himself, his eyes practically rolling back in his head. After a moment, gasping for air, he opens his eyes so that he can see it, watch his cock pumping into Sherlock’s mouth, and the sight of it is so mind-burningly hot that he comes unexpectedly, without even having had the chance to warn Sherlock (oh God, so rude) but it’s too late – he’s caught in the throes of his climax, clutching Sherlock’s hip behind him with his good hand, his entire body emptying into Sherlock’s mouth, or so it feels like, the muscles of his arse and thighs clenching as he shoots off down Sherlock’s throat. The orgasm is so intense that it feels as though it lasts for five minutes, and by the time its grip relaxes, John’s breathing has gone straight to hell and his eyes are watering. 

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” he pants, pulling himself from Sherlock’s mouth. He gets down, lying on top of Sherlock and strokes his forehead with his right hand, bracing himself on Sherlock’s shoulder. “Did I choke you?” 

Sherlock’s lips are swollen and rosy, but he smiles, shaking his head slightly. “It was minimal. I liked it.” 

“Sure?” John asks, feeling dubious, though he feels so physically good that he doesn’t care as much as he probably should. 

“Very sure. I’ve never witnessed anything as arousing as you just now,” Sherlock tells him, and John smiles, reassured, his ego expanding a bit. He drops his mouth to Sherlock’s and kisses him for a long minute and Sherlock rubs his back and arse and slides his fingers into his hair as though his very hands are addicted to him, can’t get enough of touching him, and that helps John’s ailing ego, too. 

After awhile, he slides off to his left so that he can leave his right arm over Sherlock’s belly, his legs still wound into Sherlock’s. He puts his head on Sherlock’s shoulder and Sherlock kisses his forehead. “I don’t know what I would have done without you,” John says, looking at the opposite wall. “I mean that, Sherlock. If you hadn’t been in my life for some reason, and Mary had thrown me out when this happened – I think I would have ended it by now.”

“Don’t,” Sherlock says sharply. “I mean that. Don’t even suggest it. Don’t even _think_ it. I need you. And I’m here. I never would have left you on your own like this. So there’s no point in even contemplating the hypothetical.”

John lifts his head and looks down at him. “Okay,” he says. Then adds, “I didn’t mean to scare you. Sorry.”

Sherlock’s lips press together a little. “Just – don’t,” he says again, and pulls John down to him again, as though needing to confirm for himself that John is really there. John lets himself go, basking in it as though Sherlock is the very sun. 

(He is, isn’t he: the sun around which he rotates. As he is the sun around which Sherlock rotates. They are a universe unto themselves, and it is absolutely phenomenal.)

***


	4. Four

**Chapter Four**

 

The next few days rank among the very best John’s ever lived. Sherlock is still fairly relentless about not helping him for the most part, but the difference is that he encourages more, managing to do it without making John feel stupid – a narrow line for both of them, John thinks wryly. Sherlock is not exactly famous for his tact, and as for himself – well. He knows he can be prickly, and that he’s been especially prickly since the loss of his arm. Sherlock doesn’t appear to be bothered by it, showing more patience than John knew he possessed. He makes enough progress that Sergio eases off a bit during rehab sessions, and John stops thinking that they’re flirting with each other. And to cap it off, Sherlock continues to make his nightly exception to helping him in the shower in addition to all of the other times they touch one another. 

Tonight they’re lying in the bath instead, which was also Sherlock’s – surprisingly romantic – idea. John is lying back on his chest and Sherlock’s fingers are lazily massaging his scalp, John’s head tipped back on his shoulder, and it feels heavenly. Now that he’s allowed to touch John openly, something seems to have unlocked itself within Sherlock. John hadn’t had the faintest idea of how incredibly romantic Sherlock could be, how emotional. Sherlock admitted it himself in bed just last night, saying that it was slightly shocking to him, too. John had said that he liked it and kissed the embarrassed look off Sherlock’s face. He can still feel Sherlock’s instincts trying to fight it. It’s not easy or natural for him yet. He’ll get up suddenly and come over to John, putting his arms around him, as though having made a decision to do so after some deliberation. John is trying his best to respond by touching Sherlock frequently and freely, and it does feel strangely natural for him. Sherlock will be typing on his laptop and John will pass behind him and drop a kiss on his head, his good arm curling around Sherlock’s upper chest and Sherlock will go still, his eyes closing, then belatedly turn his face up to reach for John as though remembering of all a sudden that he is permitted to respond to it. John secretly loves these moments, loves seeing Sherlock in the awkward, raw stages of his first relationship. 

In the shower, it’s different. This is where it started. And tonight when Sherlock suggested a bath, John had given him a pleased-surprised look and said, “A bath? Together?” 

Sherlock had looked away, his cheeks flushing a little. “We could shower, if you prefer, of course.”

“I would _love_ to take a bath with you,” John had said, perhaps a bit too insistently (trying too hard – he’d winced internally), but they’d both relaxed as soon as they were in the water. John has both arms on the sides of the deep tub and Sherlock’s legs are hooked over his. Despite the hot water, John is plainly hard and revelling in Sherlock’s fingers in his hair, his eyes closed. He’s on the conditioner stage, which means that he’ll get to John’s cock next. John doesn’t mind waiting a bit; the anticipation almost makes it better. Sherlock rinses his hair, scooping up water with a cup and dowsing it over John’s head and John sighs in contentment. He turns his face and Sherlock obliges him, kissing him as his fingers press into John’s nipples and reach down between his legs to start touching him. John can feel Sherlock’s own erection in the small of his back and starts making hazy plans as to what to do for him in return, after. He groans into the kiss when Sherlock works a finger into him, one arm between John’s back and Sherlock’s chest, the other reaching over his scarred shoulder to work at his cock. It feels amazing; John is awash with sensation and the fact that Sherlock is breathing hard against his hair, aroused by doing this for him, makes it all the better. The rhythm is perfect – Sherlock’s fingers – two of them now – plunge into him, his fist jerking swiftly up along John’s shaft, making him feel simultaneously as though he’s fucking Sherlock’s fist while being fucked by his fingers. It has to be the best possible combination. He still feels inadequate, lacking in resources to make Sherlock feel anywhere near this good in return, but for Sherlock’s sake, he’s trying not to ruin their newfound sex life with his constant griping and feeling like he’ll never be enough for Sherlock in any way. 

Never mind that for now, he tells himself, the orgasm approaching with haste. Sherlock bites down on his earlobe, his fist splashing in and out of the water as he jerks John off and John’s back arches and he comes, his come spraying up and hitting the faucet and the wall. Sherlock’s fingers press harder against his prostate and he grunts, his body shooting out another round before sagging limply back against Sherlock, water washing over the sides of the tub with it. 

Sherlock’s breath is hot and shaky against his neck, his cock harder than ever. John gives himself a moment to recover, panting in Sherlock’s arms, then says breathlessly, “Help me up.” He pulls himself up with his right arm and Sherlock gives him a push behind his left shoulder to balance it. John gets himself turned around, kneeling between Sherlock’s long legs. “Rinse out your hair,” he orders, getting to his feet and stepping out of the tub. 

Sherlock smiles at him and shifts forward, submerging his head. He resurfaces with a splash a moment later and gets out of the tub, his erection standing stiffly out, flushed and red, the sleek, dark hair around it slicked down from the water. John is waiting with a towel, having managed to pin his own around his waist himself for once, and starts patting Sherlock’s chest and shoulders dry with his right hand, aware of Sherlock’s intense gaze on him all the while. He doesn’t protest or try to take over, watching John but not saying anything. 

“Turn round,” John says, and Sherlock acquiesces, letting John dry his back. John gives his legs a once over, then wrings out Sherlock’s hair as best he can, then turns him around again and gives him the towel before getting down on his knees. When he takes Sherlock’s cock in his right hand and puts his mouth on it, Sherlock’s breath sucks in so sharply that John thinks he might actually pass out and looks up in alarm. Sherlock’s eyes are closed tightly, his mouth open, breathing shallowly, but he’s perfectly all right. Just still not used to having people touch him this way.

They’ve done this once before and Sherlock reacted the same way then, his legs sprawling open in his chair as John had slid off his own, a hand on Sherlock’s knee. Sherlock’s eyes had widened when he realised what John was about to do, but hadn’t wasted any time opening his trousers at John’s request. “You don’t have to,” he’d said, but the protest was feeble and John had overridden it. Sherlock had come less than five minutes into it, his fingers white-knuckled on the arms of his chair, body jerking and spasming as he’d come in John’s mouth, his breaths high-pitched and shallow, and when he’d recovered, he’d opened his eyes and pulled John into his lap, wrapping his arms around him so tightly John almost hadn’t been able to breathe, seeming unable to speak for several minutes. Which was fine, really; John had been more interested in kissing him than in getting a detailed verbal report on how his first blow job had been received. He knew, and the knowledge had been yet another balm to his unstable ego. 

It’s quite something, getting to be the one to reduce Sherlock to this, he thinks now. Sherlock’s hands are gripping the edge of the counter as though afraid to let himself touch John at all, lest he get too rough or something. John persuades his throat muscles to relax and takes more of Sherlock in, hollowing his cheeks as he slides his head back and forth. Sherlock’s thighs are trembling. He uses his good hand to touch Sherlock’s balls and press his fingers into that sensitive place just behind them. He comes up for a proper breath after a bit and says, “Put your fingers in my hair.”

Sherlock does it wordlessly, panting, and John resumes sucking. He loves doing this even more than he’d secretly thought he might, if given the chance. He knows how good it feels, himself, and wants Sherlock to feel it. It’s extremely clear from Sherlock’s reactions both times that no one has ever done this for him before, and John thinks that’s an incredible shame. If he’s waited thirty-eight years for this, for someone to care for him enough to do this for him, it’s more than long enough and John intends to make it worth his while. 

Sherlock’s voice rises sharply and he says John’s name urgently, fingers tightening in John’s hair, trying to dislodge him, but John refuses to move, getting his mouth all the way to the base of Sherlock’s cock, and Sherlock comes directly down his throat. The sensation is odd but not bad and John holds himself still, waiting to see if there will be another gush of release, and there is. Sherlock is trying to repress the noises he’s making but they’re bursting from his nose and throat despite himself. John eases back, still holding the head of Sherlock’s cock in his lips, his tongue rubbing it gently, and there are another few trickles of release, and then Sherlock exhales deeply, breathing hard. “John,” he says again, and the word alone says so much. 

John sits back on his knees and smiles up at him, his right hand caressing Sherlock’s shaking left thigh, and for the moment at least, everything seems all right. 

*** 

In the morning they sleep in, waking up with their hands all over one another, and after they’ve got each other off again, panting into each other’s mouths and stroking each other’s cocks, they lie together, kissing and laughing, and John feels absolutely giddy and sees the same thing on Sherlock’s face. He’s never seen him look so happy, not even the time when they had a quadruple homicide in the Cotswolds. 

“I honestly never imagined life could be like this,” Sherlock tells him, sounding almost wistful. 

“If only we had realised sooner,” John says, searching his eyes. “Got here sooner. It’s my fault. I know that.”

“Stop that,” Sherlock says swiftly. “It doesn’t matter now.” 

“I’ll apply for a divorce just as soon as I can,” John promises, his good arm over Sherlock’s side. 

“I’ve actually looked into that,” Sherlock confesses, looking a bit sheepish. 

“Why am I not surprised?” 

Sherlock ignores this. “It may very well be that you can apply to have the marriage voided, since Mary married you under a false name.”

“Really?” John asks. “It’s not the person you marry?”

“It is, but it’s considered fraudulent,” Sherlock says. “Which it most certainly is. Plus the added factor of your wife having a criminal record adds to the fraud. Though you wouldn’t have to have that exposed, if you’d rather not. For your child’s sake, I imagine you might not want to do that.”

“Maybe not,” John says. He thinks of the baby and sighs. “What would the advantage of voiding the marriage be, over a divorce? Is there any difference?”

Sherlock’s mouth twists into a strange, small, not-quite smile. “You wouldn’t have to wait for it to be a year,” he says quietly. 

John thinks this over and realises what he is saying. “You mean, _we_ wouldn’t have to wait for it to be a year,” he corrects Sherlock. “That’s what I want to do, then. We’ll get it properly settled with Mary. I’ll work out custody arrangements or something. I don’t know about all that, but – we’ll figure something out.”

“I love you,” Sherlock says, very seriously, and John pulls him closer and kisses him for a long time. 

Afterward, Sherlock breaks his own rule and helps John cook breakfast, standing behind him to steady a pepper as John slices it carefully, Sherlock’s arms around him, his lips on his ear and in his hair. It’s exquisitely intimate and he loves every second of it without a shred of shame. He couldn’t possibly care less if he is technically still married to Mary. She left him, damn it. And Sherlock is – John can’t even begin to express how much Sherlock is to him, how incredibly, vitally important. He could be with anyone, if he wanted to. Who could resist him, once they knew what he’s really like under his acerbic surface? He’s so charming, so funny, so thoughtful, so romantic, and so very, very obsessed with John and only John, and in a way, that’s the best part of all. Knowing that, no matter how he himself feels about himself, Sherlock really doesn’t seem to see his inadequacy, his uselessness. Just existing seems to be use enough to Sherlock. It’s doing incredible things for his ego, just knowing that he’s _this_ important to Sherlock. It’s done wonders for the depression, reducing it to a much lesser shadow in the back of his mind whenever he thinks of his arm, his inability to do any of the things he used to do with Sherlock, as a doctor, any of it. Sherlock keeps insisting that he will be able to do most of that stuff again, in time. He’s even suggested going to a shooting range to do some right-handed target practise. He reminded John that he shot the dog in Dewer’s Hollow with his right hand, and once John got over marvelling that he’d managed to remember _that_ , of all tiny things to have noticed, because he still marvels every time, even after all this time, he reminded Sherlock in turn that he’d stopped shooting anything for the two years that Sherlock had been away, and when he’d started again, he’d just used his left hand. It had been easier. So: target practise, definitely. 

John smiles to himself and Sherlock wants to know what he’s smiling about. “Nothing,” John says, then changes his mind. “You.”

Sherlock kisses his neck in response. “ _You_ ,” he says, as though in rebuttal. “Now the mushrooms.” 

They make an omelette together this way and it’s ridiculous and childish and probably takes three times as long as it needs to and John doesn’t even care. They eat sitting beside each other at the table because being any further apart at the moment seems absolutely impossible. Intolerable. Sherlock is sitting to his left so that John’s right arm is free to feed himself, his right arm around John’s back. John’s got his left arm resting on the back of Sherlock’s chair, which isn’t the same, but his foot is hooked around Sherlock’s ankle and it’s something, at least. 

They’re just drinking their tea afterwards when Sherlock’s phone rings. Sherlock makes a grumbling sound but digs it out of his dressing gown pocket and looks at the screen. He frowns and answers it. “Mycroft,” he says. He goes silent, listening, but his face changes, going starkly sober. His eyes meet John’s, and John thinks, _Moriarty_. Sherlock keeps listening for a long time, making small sounds but letting Mycroft do the talking. Finally he says, “Piccadilly Circus. We’ll be there.” He listens for another moment, then says only, “Yes,” but his eyes go to John’s again as he says it. There’s another pause, then, “It’s not up for discussion. It’s my decision. I’ll let you know when we’ve arrived.”

He disconnects. “Is it Moriarty?” John asks, his voice tight. 

Sherlock inhales carefully – too carefully, John thinks – and moves his arm to the back of John’s chair. “There’s been a tip-off. There’s a bomb at Piccadilly Circus. They don’t know where exactly or when it will go off, but apparently it will be today sometime. Mycroft thinks it could be Moriarty.” He waits a moment, his eyes taking in John’s face, then adds, “They also don’t know anything about how it will be detonated. It could be by a timer, but if it _is_ Moriarty – ”

“It will almost certainly be something more complicated,” John says grimly. He feels sick, every bit of the happiness he’s been feeling for the past few days evaporating like a drop of water in the desert. So this is it: the crucial moment, arguably the most crucial moment of both their lives: Moriarty is back, they have a lead, and John is completely unable to do anything about it. Sherlock is going to go and face Moriarty alone and John is going to pace around the house worrying and gritting his teeth and wishing with all his being that he were there with Sherlock. 

“I want you to come,” Sherlock says quietly, his words scattering John’s thoughts like soap in oil. 

“Don’t be stupid,” John says tightly, his throat constricting. “You know I can’t.”

“I mean it. I’m not going without you.” Sherlock is being stubborn, digging his heels in. 

“You’re wasting time,” John says angrily. “Moriarty’s out there somewhere, and a bomb could go off at any minute. Get out of here. Go and solve it. There are lives depending on you. I refuse to hold you back.”

“You’re right, we’re short on time, so let’s not argue,” Sherlock says, his own mouth tightening with frustration. “You are my partner and I’m not going without you. Not this time. Didn’t I promise I would never leave you and go running off? Do you really think I didn’t mean it?” 

“This is different!” John doesn’t mean to be so angry but he can’t help it – it’s too unfair, all of this. “This is _Moriarty_. You _have_ to stop him this time, or else what’s the point of everything we’ve ever done? And there’s a _bomb_ , so hurry up and get out of here!”

Sherlock is shaking his head, his jaw set stubbornly. “I don’t want to fight about it, but I’m not going unless you’re coming. I need you. Do you still have your Sig? Is it here?” 

“Yes,” John says, “but – ”

“ _John_. Shut up. Please.” Sherlock gets up, pushing his chair in. “We need to get dressed. Go up and get started and I’ll be right there, unless you don’t need me. Bring your gun. You _must_ do this for me. I need you there. The entire reason I had to leave London and you for two years was because Moriarty forced me to. That was when I knew that I never wanted to be without you again. So don’t desert me now. Please.”

John looks back at him, the amount of emotion on his face startling, and he catches a glimpse for the first time of what Sherlock’s time away without him must have been like, if he felt this way all along. He swallows. He doesn’t know whether Sherlock is just saying all of this because he thinks it would be better for him to come along for the sake of his self-worth, but he doesn’t doubt the emotion on Sherlock’s face. “If it means that much to you, then,” he says, his throat dry. “I just don’t want to slow you down.” 

“Then don’t,” Sherlock says, his voice a bit sharp. He jerks his head toward John’s bedroom overhead, the room he only uses to keep his clothes in now. “Go and get dressed.”

“All right.” John accepts it and takes the stairs at a run. His lack of arm makes him feel clumsier than ever. He wishes they’d got that target practise in sooner, that they’d thought of it sooner. Or that they’d at least had a more minor case for John to try tagging along to for his first one as a one-armed wingman. He feels terribly dubious about the entire idea as he struggles into his jeans. He’s just pulling a jumper on when Sherlock’s steps come pounding up the stairs. 

“Socks,” he says, laying his Browning on the dresser. John puts them in his hand, still trying to get his t-shirt tucked in. Sherlock hastily buttons his jeans for him, so quickly and efficiently that John hardly feels manhandled by it, then kneels and gets John’s socks on one foot at a time. Socks are the hardest things to put on and so far he’s only done it for rehab sessions. 

“I have physio this afternoon,” he says, though it’s not a real objection. 

“I’ve already called and cancelled it,” Sherlock says briskly. “Gun?” 

John opens the top drawer of his dresser and takes it out, and follows Sherlock down the stairs. “What’s the plan?” he asks, feeling a thrum of anticipation low in his gut. 

Sherlock holds out John’s coat and John doesn’t protest, getting his limp left arm into it first, then the right, and puts his Sig in the right pocket. Sherlock gets his own coat on, then turns and studies him. “Here,” he says, and tucks John’s left hand into his coat pocket. “Can you just keep it in there? That way it won’t get in your way, but you’ll be able to take it out if you need to for some reason. I don’t want to strap it down or something.”

“Okay,” John says, his uncertainty forming a weird mixture with the anticipation brewing in the pit of his stomach. “I really don’t know about this, Sherlock. I mean, I’ll come – I just – ”

Sherlock buttons his own coat, then bends to kiss him. “With both hands cuffed behind your back,” he reminds John, his voice momentarily going low and private. Then he straightens up. “Let’s go,” he says, and the moment is over, though its warmth is still tingling in John’s belly along with his doubt. 

*** 

It’s been three hours already and John is tense. It’s cold and they’re squashed behind an archway of the County Fire & Alliance Life building on Regent. There’s an earpiece in John’s ear that one of Mycroft’s minions silently delivered shortly after they arrived and every now and then, Mycroft checks in. Sherlock has one too, of course, along with a lapel mic that he’s been keeping switched off. It’s early February and it’s cold, despite Sherlock’s heat pressed to his left side. 

There’s a burst of static in John’s ear and then Mycroft’s voice comes on. “Update,” he says, his tone grimmer than ever. “They’ve found the bomb.”

Sherlock switches on his mic. “Where?”

“Directly under the statue of Anteros, it would seem.” Mycroft lets the significance of that sink in for a moment. (Maximum pedestrian casualties, John thinks.) “The trouble is, they can’t seem to locate the detonator. The rest of the bomb unit is on its way.” 

“Hurry,” Sherlock says. 

“Christ,” John says softly, his eyes on the dozens of people sitting on the steps of the statue’s base and standing or walking around it. It’s more than dozens, depending on the blast radius of the bomb. “Ask him if there’s any estimate on the size, impact, or explosive used.”

“I caught that,” Mycroft says. “And no, no details at this point.”

Sherlock glances at him, hand reaching into his pocket to turn off the mic again. “You realise we could easily be in the radius from here,” he says. “Do you want to move?” 

John shakes his head, not even thinking about it. “I want to be in range. He might show up. You know him – he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, as he always used to say, but I have a feeling he’d want to see this. Now that we know there really is a bomb.”

“True,” Sherlock agrees, staring at the statue as though sheer willpower could force it to inform him of something more. 

John shifts his weight. “If I’d known it was going to be this – well, uneventful, I wouldn’t have worried so much,” he says. 

“Don’t speak too quickly,” Sherlock says, eyes still on the statue. “I wish we knew more.”

Twenty minutes more pass before their earpieces click again. “Update,” Mycroft says, and Sherlock turns the mic back on. 

“Go,” he says, pulling back into the shadows with John. 

Mycroft’s voice is strained. “The bomb is an RDD. The bomb squad is unable to identify a detonator, suggesting that it may actually be enclosed within the device.” 

“RDD?” Sherlock repeats, frowning. 

“A radiological dispersal device. A bomb based on radioactive materials combined with more conventional explosives – C4, probably,” Mycroft tells him, sounding impatient. 

“A dirty bomb,” John supplies, his heart sinking. “How big is it? Physically?” 

There’s a pause on Mycroft’s end, then he says, “Just over one metre square.”

“Shit!” John’s reaction makes Sherlock look uneasily at him. “And they can’t defuse it without risk of detonation.”

“That’s what it’s looking like, yes,” Mycroft says tightly. “I’ll let you know when we know more. Are you planning to hold your current position? It’s not yet known whether or not you’re in the blast radius.”

“We are,” John tells him, his jaw clenching. He looks at Sherlock. 

Sherlock looks back at him for a moment, then says, “We’re not moving. Not yet, at least. Keep us posted.”

Mycroft switches off without saying goodbye. 

Sherlock shuts off the mic and opens his mouth to say something to John when his phone rings. He takes it out of his coat pocket, looks at the screen, and answers, sounding wary. “Hello.” His face changes and he moves closer to John, turning up the volume so that he can hear it. 

“Hello, sexy,” Moriarty’s voice drawls. “Long time no see.”

“Yes, it has been awhile,” Sherlock agrees cautiously. He draws further into the shadows of one of the arches and surreptitiously switches on his mic again. “I assume this is all you, then.” 

“Had to come back with a bit of a bang, didn’t I? Back home this is how we used to party.” 

“Is that what you’ve been doing for the past three years?” Sherlock asks, keeping his voice casual. “Studying bomb-making?” He looks at John and mimes texting. John gets it immediately and types a text to Mycroft as quickly as he can with his right thumb. _S on phone with M! Trace?_

“Had to do something to pass the time,” Moriarty says lazily. “Got to keep up the game. I had to be out of England to maximise the effects of your ‘death’ there. But you know something, Sherlock? I’m bored.” 

“Bored,” Sherlock repeats, as though not certain what to make of the word. 

“Bored to death. Oh, hang on, sweetheart, let me change phones and call you back.” There’s a hint of grin in Moriarty’s voice as he disconnects. 

“Damn it,” Sherlock says, lips tightening with irritation. “He knows exactly how long it takes to establish a trace!” 

“We may just have to do this the old-fashioned way,” John says. A double-decker bus lurches into gear just outside their archway, pedestrians walking along unconcerned, unaware that there is a bomb large enough to take out all of Piccadilly Circus within metres of their feet. 

Sherlock glances at him. “What? Just find him, you mean?” 

“That would be ideal,” John says. He eases around, surveying the crowds as Sherlock’s phone rings again. 

“So: you’re bored,” Sherlock prompts. “Why?” 

“It’s all just too easy,” Moriarty complains. “Your men have found the bomb, as they were supposed to. I assume you’re here somewhere, and your brother, too. Probably two rooftops over in a helicopter just waiting to airlift me or you out, whichever he thinks more necessary. And I’m bored of playing. No one can keep up, not even you, but we all knew _that_. And you were as good as it got, so yeah: I’m bored.”

“Then stop playing ‘the game’,” Sherlock says, his distaste for the term evident. “Just retire. You must have more than enough money to know what to do with. Go live on a beach somewhere.”

“Nope, no good, I’m afraid,” Moriarty says, with what sounds like genuine regret. “I’d never be content. I’m only happy when the world around me is burning, Sherlock. You know that.”

“I’m afraid I do,” Sherlock says, with a slight grimace. 

“Call you back, darlin’,” Moriarty says, and hangs up. 

Mycroft texts back. _Unable to establish trace. Keep him talking longer. I can hear Sherlock’s side of it._ Frustrated, John texts back, _He keeps changing phones_ and sends it. 

Sherlock’s phone rings again. “So when you say that I’m ‘here’, you mean to say that you’re here in Piccadilly as well,” he says, probing. 

“Of course I am. So do me a favour, Sherlock Holmes. When you see me, shoot me. Just do it. Put me out of my misery once and for all. I wish I had done it that day on the roof, but fooling you was just too good to miss.” 

“Do it yourself and spare us all the drama,” Sherlock says, rolling his eyes. 

“No, it would be the perfect end to my saga,” Moriarty insists, and John imagines he can see those dark eyes glittering with amusement and malice. “It’s got to be you. Don’t tell me you can’t see that, Sherlock.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “Death is too good for the likes of you. I rather fancy watching you rot in Pentonville or some other prison for the rest of your life. Perhaps John and I could come and visit.”

“Nope. Won’t work,” Moriarty says, almost sorrowfully. “You know you’d never keep me contained, and the instant I’m out, the game is on again. You _know_ that,” he complains. “Stop pretending you don’t!” 

He hangs up without warning this time, but calls back immediately. “Then turn yourself in and I’ll do it,” Sherlock tries. 

It makes sense, John thinks, but Moriarty laughs for awhile. “Oh, Sherlock,” he says, still chuckling. “I _have_ missed you.”

Sherlock grits his teeth together. “Where is the detonator?” he asks. 

“Inside the bomb, of course. You knew that,” Moriarty chides. 

“How is it detonated?” 

“Is John with you?” Moriarty asks conversationally, as if he didn’t hear this. 

“Why?” Sherlock asks warily. 

Moriarty sounds as though he’s shrugging. “Oh, no reason. I just assumed. Pity about that injury of his. Awful pity. Terrible, really. How’s he coping with being crippled? That wife of his playing nursemaid?” Before Sherlock can answer, opening his mouth and looking with apprehension at John, he goes on. “Oh no, she wouldn’t be, would she? Not with the baby and all that. I assume you’ve managed to remember to take him to rehab sometimes between sucking his cock.” He sounds terribly amused. “Don’t bother denying that one, Sherlock. I know what’s been going on in 221B lately.” 

Now Sherlock is truly angry. John can see it in the corners of his mouth and his eyes. “What do you want?” he demands. “If you just want to be killed, then why plan all this? What’s the point, or isn’t there one? Is that the game – chaotic evil without reason?” 

“You hate it, don’t you,” Moriarty chuckles. “It’s perfect! You hate it!” 

Sherlock closes his eyes for a moment and pinches the bridge of his nose, regaining control of his temper. “I see,” he says, forcing his voice out calmly. “That _is_ the game. I understand. How is the bomb going to be detonated?” 

“Put it this way, Sherlock,” Moriarty says casually. “When this conversation ends, I’m only going to make one more phone call. And you’ve got about twenty seconds left. Any last words? I assume you’re within the blast radius – you’d never be further than that.” 

“Sherlock,” John says, very quietly, his tone urgent. He isn’t completely positive, but – a man of Moriarty’s height has just come around from the far side of the statue. He’s holding something to his ear, possibly a mobile, one foot up on the first step of the base. He nods at him with his chin and Sherlock creeps closer, his eyes narrowed. 

“Have you ever considered mathematics or something?” Sherlock asks idly, as though it’s of no importance to him. “Crossword puzzles? Chess tournaments? Just because you’re intelligent doesn’t mean you have to be bored all the time.” 

Moriarty gives another laugh. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you,” he says. The laughter dies. “Goodbye, Sherlock Holmes. Give my love to Doctor Watson. You still have a few seconds to do that.” 

There’s a click and he’s gone. “Mycroft!” Sherlock snaps. “We have him in our sights! Repeat, we have a visual on Moriarty!” 

“You’re sure it’s him?” John asks, squinting across the way. The man they think is Moriarty is wearing a flat cap, black pea coat and Converse trainers. He is chewing gum, and even as the words leave John’s mouth, he’s certain. 

“Visual confirmed!” Mycroft says urgently. “Do you have a shot?” 

Sherlock looks at John. “We can’t both shoot; there would be a panic. You take it.”

“Sherlock – this is no time to – shit!” John breaks off; Moriarty is taking out another phone. He glances around casually as if he knows he is being watched, and begins to dial, very slowly and deliberately. The moral question is clear, John thinks: the bomb blast will certainly kill Moriarty if someone doesn’t shoot him before he can set it off. There’s no grey area here: Moriarty intends to die either way. 

“Sherlock, take the shot!” Mycroft shouts. 

Sherlock ignores Mycroft. “John! Take it! Do it now!” 

John doesn’t hesitate. It’s nearly thirty feet, but he did complete sniper training once upon a time, not that the Sig is all that accurate past about that distance. He aims and the gun becomes an extension of his hand, his arm completely steady. Moriarty’s finger is about to press down on the seventh or eighth number, and John fires. One bullet. Moriarty falls to the pavement and around him people scream and scatter like a flock of pigeons. 

“Mycroft, confirm hit!” Sherlock says, taking two steps out of the archway, his hand clamping down around John’s left wrist. 

“Confirmed,” Mycroft’s voice comes back. “Unable to verify death from here, however.” 

“We’ll do that. Come on, John!” They run across the street, heedless of the traffic. Moriarty is lying facedown on the pavement, the phone dropped several inches from his hand. 

“Don’t touch that,” John advises. “It could still go off, or if he’s put in all the numbers but hasn’t pressed send – ”

“Right,” Sherlock says. He lets go of John’s hand and kneels beside Moriarty, feeling for a pulse in his wrist. “He’s dead,” he says, with relief. “At least, I think so.”

John crouches down beside him and confirms it. “Yes. He’s dead. Well and truly dead this time.” Sherlock doesn’t say anything, so John looks up to find Sherlock looking at him with something like wonder. 

“John,” he says, his voice rough. “You did it. You _did_ it. One shot. With your right hand and your left one paralysed. You’ve killed the greatest criminal of our time.”

It hasn’t even hit him yet. John looks down at Moriarty’s body. “I suppose I did,” he says in disbelief. He looks back up at Sherlock. “Sherlock – ” His voice stops; he doesn’t know what to say, but it doesn’t matter. 

The bomb squad is swarming up from the Underground in containment suits. They are scanned for radioactive contamination but the Geiger counter doesn’t detect anything. “Are you clean?” Mycroft asks in their ears, and John doesn’t know whether he’s asking about the radiation or whether or not John’s shot was seen. 

“Yes,” Sherlock says, looking around – probably for police, John thinks. “Where’s Lestrade?” 

“This is MI5 at this point,” Mycroft says. He sounds decidedly satisfied. “Go home. We’ll likely want you for a brief press conference tomorrow at some point. Good work. Thank you.”

It’s all such an understatement, John thinks, but in the end it all happened so quickly that it’s barely had time to register. Sherlock hails a taxi and they get in as though they’re going home from any other outing. Now that the tension of the bomb is over, or is for them, at any rate – the bomb squad will deal with the bomb itself – it’s almost immediately forgotten. But the look on Sherlock’s face hasn’t changed, and as he’s getting into the car, John holds his left arm clear of the door and realises that he feels like a whole man again despite his arm. It feels like coming to life again. And Sherlock is looking at him with a look so intense that John feels his skin could catch on fire, not touching him in any way, as though aware that if he so much as let their fingers touch, they would have no choice but to have sex right here in the back of the cab. 

Later John can’t even remember who paid, or if they paid. It doesn’t matter. They get out of the car and into Baker Street, stumbling up the stairs, coats and shoes falling wherever they’re shed, and Sherlock yanks the jumper over John’s head before the flat door is even closed. John pulls at the front of Sherlock’s trousers so hard that the button comes off and Sherlock doesn’t even object. Nor does John as Sherlock rips the clothes off his body, then gets his own off in record time. It’s faster than if they wait for John to do it one-handed and right now neither of them could possibly care less about all that. Naked, they surge together like magnets, mouths joining at last, three hands going wild over one another’s skin. And John knows right then and there that the right moment has finally come, arm or no arm. “I need you,” he says urgently, his words half-disappearing into Sherlock’s mouth. He pulls back just far enough to say again more clearly. “Sherlock – I need – ”

“ _Yes_ ,” Sherlock says emphatically. “God, yes. Please!” 

He knows, John thinks. Sherlock knows precisely what he means. Somehow they get to the bedroom, nearly tripping over each other. Sherlock lets go of him only long enough to get the lube, then pushes the blankets back and turns back to reach for John, pulling him closer. They fall into bed, Sherlock on his back beneath him, looking into his eyes with such intensity that John thinks he could probably come just from being looked at like that. They don’t ask each other about using condoms. This is the last stop for either of them, he thinks, and they both know that. This is all that was left, the last piece of the puzzle, because they’ve been incredibly intimate – but now they will actually be one being, joined at the core of themselves. He cannot _wait_. He leans on his left elbow, his upper arm strong enough to take the weight on its own, not relying on being steadied by the forearm, and rubs lube over Sherlock’s cock. Their eyes never leave each other’s, except when they kiss. Sherlock seems desperate for it, desperate for his mouth, for his touch, his face so open and trusting that it’s gouging a hole in John’s chest, one that only Sherlock can fill again. This is how it works, he thinks blurrily, dizzy with emotion and lust so thick it could choke him: they hollow each other out and then fill each other in, so that there’s more of Sherlock in him than there is of himself, and vice-versa. He kisses Sherlock again as he works a finger into him. Sherlock has done this to him, twice now, but they’ve never done it this way, because it would always have been a precursor to what’s coming next and John had wanted to delay it. Not any more. It’s time now. 

Sherlock is trembling beneath him, his sphincter tightening around the intrusion of John’s finger. There is tension in his fingers, but it’s more than balanced by the hunger of his mouth. John makes a slightly questioning sound into his mouth and Sherlock makes an affirmative one in response. The muscles release and John comes back with a second finger. Sherlock is so tight that John’s mouth is watering, his cock already leaking, at the thought of being in there with more than his fingers. Next time he’ll go down on Sherlock first, build up to it, but today they both need this and need it now: to bond over Moriarty’s end, to celebrate John discovering that he still is a proper, fully functioning member of the human race again, a real man and all of that. 

Sherlock’s cock is swollen and dark against his belly, which barely even crinkles with his legs pulled up as they are. John gets himself on top of Sherlock with a bit of difficulty, and feels the softness of his belly touching Sherlock’s hard, smooth one, and that doesn’t matter any more, either. Sherlock is looking at him as though he is Anteros himself, and his overt desire for him makes John feel like he’s the king of the universe. He shifts his weight, still needing his right hand free, and without saying anything about it, Sherlock puts his right hand under John’s left elbow, supporting his weight with it, and John gets it and leans into it as he guides his cock to the entrance of Sherlock’s body. Their eyes are on each other’s, unblinking, as he pushes himself into Sherlock in one long, slow push, as deeply as he can go. Sherlock’s mouth opens, sucking in breath, and he crosses his ankles over John’s back as John pauses for a moment, giving them both a chance to breathe as Sherlock’s body adjusts. It’s difficult, with Sherlock’s muscles clenching and shivering around his cock, but John makes himself keep breathing, focusing on not letting himself come. 

Then Sherlock nods, his lips parted, and John wants to smile but can’t – the moment is too intense. Their eyes are locked together as John trembles with the effort of reining himself in before he begins to move within Sherlock. It feels better than anything in the world. Better than any woman he’s been with, better than any fantasy he’s imagined. He is _inside_ Sherlock, thrusting into him, and the heat of Sherlock’s body is unholy. He can hear himself, hear Sherlock, neither of them saying anything in particular, just breathing hard, Sherlock moaning when he forgets to check himself. His muscles are still easing and his cock is twitching between their lower bellies, and it’s wet at the tip. John starts thrusting harder, deeper, faster, and Sherlock says, “Oh God, oh _God_ ,” his words changing into an inarticulate moan as John manages to target his prostate, the fingers of his left hand reaching around his thigh to dig into John’s arse and the added stimulus is almost too much. John is gasping, his hips snapping forward as hard as he can, unable to pace himself in any way; he’s too far gone and holding back is not even an option any more. He’s never fucked anyone this hard before – never needed to this badly, and never would have risked hurting a woman by slamming into her the way he is now. But with Sherlock it feels better than it ever has and the better it feels, the more he needs it, the deeper and harder he needs it, and Sherlock is reacting exactly the same way – the harder John goes, the more he craves it. He is fucking Sherlock without restraint, well beyond the bounds of his own control now. There is sweat at his temples and between them, their bodies slapping together and Sherlock’s voice is hoarse, his voice grating out over his vocal cords. His grip on John’s elbow is so tight that it’s tingling strangely, but John doesn’t care. His cock is ramming itself as deeply as it can go, animalistic and wild. Sherlock’s grip on both his arse and elbow tighten even further and John leans harder into his supporting hand so that he can jerk at Sherlock’s cock. Sherlock comes the instant John touches him, actually shouting, his deep voice raised so loud that Mrs Hudson will have definitely heard it if she’s home and it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t fucking – John is suddenly aware of two things at once as the white heat blazes across his vision. The first is that he’s coming, so hard it feels like a fire hose, his cock flooding Sherlock’s body in drenching waves. The other is that he can feel the fingers of his left hand as they curl themselves around Sherlock’s bicep and grasp at it as the orgasm rips through his body. When it finally stops, what feels like hours later, John goes completely limp, crashing down onto Sherlock’s torso, his cock still buried inside him, panting into his neck. 

His brain is hazy, flooded with endorphins and the feeling of being five thousand times the man he ever was before this moment, and that he has no desire to ever not be physically joined to Sherlock again for the rest of their lives. It’s too good to miss for any reason at all. They just won’t eat or go out any more, ever. At the moment, at least, this seems completely reasonable. 

“John,” Sherlock says, still gasping for breath. “Your hand – ! It’s – are you – ”

 _That’s right_. Almost lost in the moment of his orgasm, John’s nearly forgotten. He lifts his head and looks at his fingers where they’re still grasping Sherlock’s bicep. They’re tingling and buzzing strangely but they respond when he tightens them. “Oh my God,” he says, stunned. “Oh my _God!_ ”

Sherlock is looking at it, too, his expression one of mixed disbelief and wonder. “I felt it – I actually felt the nerves activating! Can you – ?”

John lets go of him and flexes the fingers, turning his wrist this way and that, lifting the entire arm. “I can feel it!” He feels simultaneously as excited as a small child on Christmas morning and heavy with lassitude after the strength of his orgasm. He puts his hand on Sherlock’s face, feeling it for the first time, and an enormous wedge forms in his throat, blocking his ability to speak. “It was you,” he says around it, his voice so tight he sounds half-strangled. “The way you were squeezing it – it started tingling while we were – but I didn’t think _this_ would happen! But it did – _you_ did this!”

Sherlock’s lips press hard together, his chin wrinkling up. “Massage,” he manages to say, his throat constricted. “I just wasn’t doing it hard enough. Or the right way.” 

“It was probably all of it. Every single thing that you did for me,” John says, heartfelt. “God, I love you. I love you so much.” He kisses Sherlock, getting both arms around him under his back for the first time since they’ve been together, Sherlock’s legs wrapping around his back again, John’s softening dick still inside him. He could practically die of joy right now. He couldn’t ask for a single thing more. They kiss and kiss and John feels himself starting to slip out, a wet rush of semen coming with it. It doesn’t matter. Sherlock’s legs relax around him, tangling with his, and they lie there in each other’s arms and gaze into each other’s faces and it’s genuinely the happiest John has ever been or ever could be, he thinks. 

“You might still need some physiotherapy,” Sherlock says, his fingers raking through John’s sweat-damp hair. 

“I don’t care. I’m so happy I could die,” John says frankly. 

Sherlock smiles, a huge, loopy, ridiculous, unfiltered smile, and kisses him on the forehead. “Don’t you dare,” he says. “Though I can’t quite take it all in. That was phenomenal, for the record. I want to do that with you every day for the rest of our lives. At least twice per day. Minimum. More if required.”

“You might get a bit sore,” John says, though he really has no objection to this plan. 

“Worth it,” Sherlock counters, and kisses him on the mouth this time. John doesn’t object to this, either. He closes his eyes, feeling his stomach relax against Sherlock’s, their cocks touching, legs entwined, arms tight around each other, and wonders how on earth he ever thought he could live without this. It’s as basic as oxygen and a thousand times better. 

*** 

The press conference takes place the next day, as Mycroft predicted. The camera crews come to the front door step of 221B and they pull themselves together long enough to get dressed and go downstairs for it. The interviewers talk mostly to Sherlock at first, but he insistently redirects the focus to John over and over again. 

“This is the man we all have to thank,” he says, his arm around John’s shoulders, his hand firm. “Despite having been recently disabled in his left and dominant arm in a car accident, John Watson managed to dispatch Moriarty in a single shot, without a single civilian casualty or even creating a panic, as multiple shots would have done. It was a single shot to the skull, causing instant and virtually painless death. Moriarty was standing in the centre of the blast radius and would have died regardless if the bomb had detonated, but John is the one who prevented him from detonating it with only seconds to spare.”

The attention all turns to John. “Congratulations on the shot, Doctor Watson,” the first reporter gushes. John sees the nearest camera zooming in. “Are you ambidextrous, then? Have you always been?” 

“No, not entirely,” John says. “Though I was trained to shoot with both hands in the army. It took me awhile to stop once I left almost four ago, but then I did. I hadn’t shot with my right hand in over two years. I got very lucky.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Sherlock puts in. “John is a crack shot.” 

John manages not to smile, though it’s difficult. The sun is shining over Baker Street and he’s standing next to the man he loves and for once in his life, all of the attention is on him. It’s not that he’s craved this, but his ego and sense of pride are recovering quite nicely. 

“How bad was the disability?” another male asks. 

“Bad enough,” John says truthfully. “My arm was paralysed from the elbow on down. I was told that there was nerve damage and that it might recover itself. Miraculously, it actually has healed, but only very recently, and very suddenly. It was yesterday, in fact, after the whole business in Piccadilly Circus.”

There are a dozen questions at once at this, overlapping each other. “What brought that about?” A female reporter asks, as the rest of them second her question. 

John keeps himself from looking at Sherlock and attempts to control heat from rising to his face. “Just the right stimulus, it would seem. And perhaps it just needed the time.”

They ask a few more questions. Sherlock says something about medals being due for his heroic behaviour and John elbows him. Sherlock takes his hand despite the fact that they’re not all gone, still packing away equipment and lingering about, perhaps hoping to catch a glimpse of something more. He bends his mouth to John’s ear and says, “I can’t stand it any longer. Standing next to England’s current hero is giving rise to… certain things. Please take me inside and put me out of my misery.”

“Again?” John says under his breath. “I thought I just put you out of your misery a couple of hours ago.” 

“Yes. A couple of hours, as you said. Far too long,” Sherlock murmurs, his lips actually touching John’s ear. “I find the refractory period of said misery shockingly brief, in fact. Please. I need to feel you inside me again. I’d do it right here on the pavement if you asked.”

John swallows, vertigo swamping his head for a moment. “Let’s – keep that to the inside of the flat – at least for now,” he says with difficulty, his erection making a somewhat instantaneously appearance in his trousers. He’s wearing a suit – so many layers to take off, he thinks, his eyes on Sherlock’s arse as he follows him blindly into the house again. Who ever knew that Sherlock would be so hungry for it? Of all the best possible surprises in the world! He thinks of how his entire life went from being so terrible to so good in such a short amount of time and still can’t get over it, how incredibly bloody luck he is. He double locks the door behind them, relishing his ability to do so, then turns to see a trail of expensive clothing leading up to the flat. He takes the stairs two at a time, unable to stop his foolish grin, his heart (and trousers) all but bursting. 

***

He’s sitting on the sofa next to Sherlock two days later and they’re both on their laptops, but Sherlock’s leg is draped over his, their feet resting on the coffee table, and when John isn’t typing, he leaves his (left) hand on Sherlock’s thigh, possessive and high enough to be suggestive. Not that there’s been any need to suggest anything; they can barely stay clothed as it is. Both of them are clad only in their underwear and dressing gowns at the moment, and neither of them are complaining about anything that’s been happening between them. John has never experienced this particular intensity of honeymoon syndrome before. It’s intense and emotional and about four years overdue. Sherlock isn’t even trying to type; he’s scrolling through something with his left hand, his right arm over John’s shoulders and the back of the sofa. 

The door downstairs opens. Neither of them looks up. “That had better not be Mycroft,” John says, his eyes on his facebook profile, wondering if he should update his photo. Perhaps to one with Sherlock in it. Yes. 

“It’s not,” Sherlock says, sounding puzzled and looking up. “It’s not Lestrade or Mrs Hudson, either.”

“Then who – ” John starts, but then the footsteps reach the top. He sees the red coat before he sees the person wearing it, and a cold wave washes over him. _Mary_. 

She stops in the doorway, looking at them, sitting as closely as they are. The baby is in her arms. 

“What are you doing here?” John asks, not even trying to keep from sounding abrupt or unwelcoming. 

Mary sucks in her cheeks. “I came by to see how you are, as a matter of fact,” she says coolly. “And I was given fairly explicit orders to bring Ambrosia by.”

(Oh God, that name again, John thinks.) “You could have called first,” he says flatly. 

Sherlock surreptitiously withdraws his arm. “Come in,” he says, though he doesn’t sound particularly welcoming. He gets up and goes over to collect the baby, bringing her back to the sofa and sitting down again. John wonders if he specifically did it so that he and Mary wouldn’t have to come into contact with one another. Sherlock puts the baby in his now-functioning arms. He accepts her carefully, as his left arm is still a bit weaker than his right. “Have you named her officially?” he asks Mary. 

Mary looks surprised. “Of course,” she says. “The birth certificate was issued just after I went home from the hospital.”

“Without John,” Sherlock says in obvious disapproval. 

Mary shrugs. “He wasn’t there.”

“Because you sent him away,” Sherlock says, even more sharply. 

Mary takes a few steps inside. “About that,” she says to John. She hesitates. “I saw your press conference on the news. Congratulations. It’s all over the newspapers, too.”

John considers this, then decides not to answer. There’s nothing polite to say. He knows very well that it’s all over the papers, damn it. Sherlock has actually kept a copy of every single article, pinned to the fridge with magnets. He looks down at the face of his child and thinks that she might have the Watson nose. It’s a bit early to say for sure, though. Perhaps he could call her Amy. Anything would be better than Ambrosia. Suddenly he wonders if that’s Mary’s real name. It would explain how she came up with it. 

He can feel Mary’s uncertainty as she tries to figure out how to continue whatever it is she wants to say. “So,” she tries. “I see you’ve recovered.”

“Yeah,” John says after a moment or two have passed. It’s short. “It did.” He doesn’t feel the slightest need to explain how. 

“That must be a relief.”

John snorts. “For me or for you?” 

“For you, of course,” Mary says, sounding stung. 

“I believe John is referring to the fact of it having been your reckless driving that caused it in the first place, your refusal to acknowledge the fact, and also your having left him after the fact,” Sherlock says, clearing his throat. 

He sounds defensive to John, pricklier than usual. Even more so than he was at the hospital. (What’s that about, then?) “That would about sum it up, yeah,” he says, not looking at Mary. 

She comes closer still. “John, look,” she says, placating. “I’m sorry. I am. I’ll say the accident was my fault if you really want me to. Though I don’t see how it matters, since you’re fine now, anyway.”

“I don’t need you to. The police report said it for you. Though that hardly excuses any of it,” John says coolly, his eyes still on the child in his arms. 

“I’m very glad your arm is – working again,” Mary fumbles. She comes around the coffee table and sits down next to John’s feet, and John can feel Sherlock stiffen beside him. He puts his feet on the floor and looks at her plainly. 

“What do you want, Mary?” he asks, out of patience with her. “Just spit it out.” 

Her voice is tremulous. “I-I want you to come home,” she says. “Now that you’re better – ”

“You mean, now that you wouldn’t have to care for him with a disability,” Sherlock interrupts acidly. 

“Well – _yes_ ,” Mary says, rolling her eyes at him, though only slightly. “I have a newborn baby to look after, Sherlock. I never could have dealt with a patient on top of it. Surely you can both see that!” 

“I don’t think either of us have vision problems, literal or figurative,” John says icily. He can’t stand the sight of her face and looks at his daughter instead. “I’m not going anywhere. That much should have been obvious by now.”

Mary reacts with confusion. “John – what do you mean?” Her voice goes higher, worried. “You’re better now – so you can come home!” 

“I am home,” John says. He looks up, completely dispassionate, and sees something verging on realisation beginning to show on her face. He feels completely detached from her. There’s not even a trace of anything residual. How can there be? At least half of his being is submerged into Sherlock, permanently bonded to Sherlock. The way back is welded closed, and he wants it that way. “Sorry,” he says, not meaning it. “The marriage is over, Mary. Surely _you_ can see that. There’s nothing to discuss on that front. It’s not negotiable. You threw me out; I’m staying out.” He looks back down at the baby. “I’ve changed my mind about the baby, though. We’ll have to work out the custody.” He looks at Sherlock. “Assuming you’re amenable, of course,” he says, his voice lowering, becoming instinctively more intimate. 

Sherlock still looks worried, a deep crease between his brows, but he nods. John wants to kiss the crease away and tell him that he is going to love him until the day he dies and possibly beyond, and he will. Just not at this very moment. “Of course,” Sherlock says, his voice too neutral, too studiedly even. 

“Our marriage isn’t _over_ ,” Mary says, alarmed. Her round blue eyes turn on John in panic and disbelief, already pleading. “Of course it isn’t over! I just needed you to take care of yourself for a bit! I’ve already been looking after the baby all on my own! Isn’t that enough for you? Our baby, John, _our_ daughter! This is our DNA, our flesh and blood!”

“Sorry,” John says, still not meaning it, “but you can’t use that as a harness. Listen, Mary: you shot my best friend in the heart. You lied to me from day one. God only knows what you’ve all done in the past, who you really are. And even after I managed to overlook that, even after I took you back after all of _that_ , you get us into an accident that leaves me paralysed, and I know it was an accident, but then you abandoned me completely afterward. You never once even asked how I was, and you shut me out of the birth of my own daughter. It’s too much. I don’t love you any more. And if I’m going to be completely honest about it, I’m afraid I haven’t since that night in Leinster Gardens.”

Mary looks back and forth between them, her eyes filling with tears. “You don’t mean it,” she says, as though denying it hard enough will make it true. “You’re just angry with me. You don’t really mean it. I’m your _wife_.”

“I’m having the marriage voided,” John says. He feels glacially calm. Normally he would be shouting, he thinks, but the truth dawns on him at the same time: he would only be yelling if he was emotionally invested in any way, and he isn’t. Not at all. He goes on, explaining it to her, spelling it out as clearly as possible. “You married me under a fraudulent pretext. It’s grounds. There’s no point talking about it. It isn’t going to change, no matter what.”

“You can take your time – ” Mary begins, but John cuts her off. 

“I said no.” He allows the steel to come through his voice now. “I’m absolutely finished with you. And furthermore, I’m head over heels in love with Sherlock. I don’t mean to be cruel or rub it in your face, but you _must_ understand that we’re finished, you and I.”

“No,” Mary says defiantly, looking at her hands rather than at either of them. “I don’t believe you. You’re just making that up to hurt me.” 

John turns his face to Sherlock’s, and still sees the fear there, a fear that John will eventually change his mind. “Come here,” he says softly. 

Sherlock glances at Mary, who is watching him now with something like both fear and revulsion, and his eyes come back to John’s, questioning. John takes his left arm from under the baby, pulls Sherlock in by the back of his neck, and kisses him slowly and very, very tenderly, pouring everything he feels for him into it, trying to communicate how much he needs for them to be intimate again as soon as possible, that this idiotic conversation means absolutely nothing, that it isn’t a threat in any way, that having a child together doesn’t mean anything to John in terms of Mary herself, that wanting to have his daughter around after all isn’t going to change how he feels about Sherlock, all of that. Sherlock kisses back, slightly reserved for the first moment or two, then relaxing into it in patent relief and gratitude, his hand coming up instinctively to hold John’s face. 

John holds his gaze for a moment longer when it comes to a close, smiling into his eyes, and Sherlock gives him a small, very private smile back. “I love you,” John says quietly. He turns back to Mary. 

She is crying. Not noisily, but tears are tracking down her face. “So you’re saying that if I’d martyred myself to be your nursemaid and put everything else on hold, you wouldn’t have left me,” she says, her words sodden with tears. 

“Mary, _you_ kicked _me_ out,” John says incredulously. “Look – I’m really not trying to be a jerk, but you’re not listening to what I’m saying. It’s all of it. All of it, plus the fact that I’m in love with someone else, and have been all along. I’m sorry. That’s not a nice thing to hear. But it’s the truth, so let’s find ourselves a decent lawyer and we’ll end things in a civilised way. Because that’s what would be best for the baby. And I can’t believe you named her without even consulting me.”

Mary’s eyes flash now. “When you give birth alone, you have the right.” She gets to her feet. John thinks of pointing out that she wasn’t supposed to have given birth alone, but what would be the point. She stoops and takes the baby from him. “Give her to me,” she says, the child already firmly in her grasp. 

“Mary,” Sherlock says, warningly. “You _will_ cooperate about the custody.” 

“Will I?” Mary shifts the baby in her arms, glaring at Sherlock. “I hardly think that _you’re_ in any position to give directives here, Sherlock.”

“Am I not?” Sherlock challenges, his head tilting back, his eyes cool. “I rather think I am. The baby’s father is my partner. And you may be forgetting that my brother and I, not to mention your soon-to-be ex-husband have quite enough damning evidence on you to keep you behind bars for the rest of your life, so I suggest that if you want to retain even part-time custody of your daughter, you cooperate in full.” He gets to his feet and advances around the coffee table. “And don’t even consider running. My brother’s people have been monitoring you day and night. There is nowhere you could go that they won’t find you, and if you leave, John and I will be right there on your heels.”

Mary stares at him, as though trying to stare him down, but Sherlock’s mouth is set stubbornly and John experiences a moment of gratitude for Sherlock’s very immovability and gets up to go and stand beside him, taking his hand. “He’s right,” he says firmly. “Don’t even think about trying to do a runner on us. That’s my child and I fully intend to do what it takes to fulfill my responsibilities toward her. Including protecting her from you, if need be.”

Mary’s resolve crumbles. “I hate you both,” she says bitterly. She shoots a glare at Sherlock, her chin trembling. “I _knew_ you were trouble, from the day I first set eyes on you.”

Sherlock’s lips quirk. “Let’s not even discuss when that might have been. We’ll be in touch about a lawyer. Now: get out of our home.”

Mary turns and goes, the baby still in her arms. 

John puts his arms around Sherlock. “That was phenomenal,” he says fondly. “My hero.” 

Sherlock looks at him and flushes pinkly, as sensitive as ever to John’s praise. “Was that all right?” he asks anyway. “It wasn’t too overbearing?” 

“Not at all,” John reassures him. “I love it when you get like that. I love _you_ , regardless. I only hope you know how much.” 

“I _do_ know,” Sherlock says, but he still looks troubled. “It isn’t that I doubted you. It’s just – especially with the child – ”

“I know,” John says, touching his face. “I understand completely. I’d probably worry, too, if you had a child with someone else. But it’s a moot point. I meant what I said: it was always you. Anyone else would have been second best, never mind Mary’s laundry list of sins. There’s no second guessing in my mind or heart. No doubts. No regrets. I’m yours, for good.”

“ _John_ ,” Sherlock says, his breath gusting out. “I – ” He cuts himself off, as he tends to when his feelings overwhelm and steal away his ability to articulate what’s in his head, and John loves this best of all, because he knows down to his gut that it’s wonderfully, fantastically real when Sherlock feels so intensely and so much that he can’t even verbalise any of it. He says so much just by saying his name, and leaves the rest of it to his mouth and hands and body, all of which are holding John tightly. They kiss for several long, glorious minutes, and John thinks that neither of them could ever possibly get tired of this – it’s not even a question of getting tired of it; neither of them seem capable of getting _enough_ of it yet. It’s a constant well of thirst, a constant need to touch, to restate the bond, to delight in it over and over and over again. He’s never been in this deep, never let himself fall so hard, and the only reassurance about being in complete emotional freefall like this is knowing that Sherlock is right there with him, falling just as hard and with just as little control. 

“Sherlock,” he murmurs, what feels like an hour later or so, “we should talk about this custody thing.”

Sherlock blinks at him, his pupils pooling his irises, his cheeks still flushed, and makes an obvious effort to school his mind and thoughts. “What about it?” 

“Well – it’s just, having a baby around,” John begins. “I know how little that works with our life. What we do. And I want to make this work. What I really want is the right to have access to my daughter, to visit her when I want, to have input over her life, and to be there for her as a father. But that doesn’t necessarily mean having her live with us.”

Sherlock blinks at him some more. “What do you mean?” he asks, eyes intent on John’s. 

“I just mean that I want to be a presence in her life,” John says. “I mean, she’s a newborn: she needs to be with Mary at least for now. After that, I was thinking that we or I could just visit with her, either there or here, or somewhere neutral. Maybe she could stay on the occasional weekend, but I didn’t mean regularly. I only want to ensure that I have legal access to her. I haven’t changed my mind about wanting to be a father, really, but since I am one, I want to be a responsible one. I just don’t think that means she has to live here. What I want is for her to grow up knowing that she does have two parents who love her and that she can always come to me if she needs to. Three parents, if you want to be involved. I don’t care; it’s up to you. But if Mycroft ensures that Mary sticks around, then I’ll always be just a phone call away.”

Sherlock studies him, their faces still close. “And that would be enough for you?” he asks. “Really, John? This is a large decision.”

“Maybe it should be, but it really isn’t,” John says. “Maybe that makes me a terrible person or something, but – I’m just not willing to give up what we have, finally. This life. Us. That’s the most important thing there is to me. I’ll do whatever it takes to be a decent father, but Mary and I are never going to be together, anyway. I think it’s less disruptive for a kid to grow up in one home, or at least one primary home. She can always come to us to visit. What do you think?” 

“It’s your decision,” Sherlock says instantly. “I would never ask you to do anything less than what you need to do.” 

“No, but it affects both of us,” John insists. “This is _our_ life. You’re my partner. You _are_ my life. And I wouldn’t do something that would keep you – or me, for that matter – from rushing out to a crime scene at three in the morning. That’s what we do.”

Sherlock searches his face again, then says, “If you’re sure, then…”

“I’m positive,” John says. “Especially now that I have my arm back, you’re not getting rid of me. I’m your right hand man, remember?” 

Sherlock puts his hands on John’s face and presses his lips to his forehead. “No,” he says. “I’m yours.”

*


End file.
